


Odalisque

by drinkbloodlikewine, whiskeyandspite



Series: Vignettes of Sex and Violence [1]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Bottom Hannibal, Branding, Cannibalism, Car Sex, Cleverness, Cruelty, Drug Use, Flogging, Fluff, Graphic Violence, Graphic surgery, M/M, Masochism, Physical Abuse, Public Sex, Rough Sex, Sadism, Sex Tapes, Spanking, Strangulation, Threesomes, Violence, Voyeurism, Whipping, Will is 17 in this, copious amounts of blood and its inappropriate use, graphic cruelty, mentions of past rape (not the mains), rentboy, striking, utter depravity., very dominant Hannibal, very sassy Will
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-26
Updated: 2014-07-22
Packaged: 2018-02-06 06:30:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 20
Words: 137,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1847926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drinkbloodlikewine/pseuds/drinkbloodlikewine, https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiskeyandspite/pseuds/whiskeyandspite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>There’s something deeply decadent about it, defiling such a luminous vehicle with something so cheap as smoke. The irony isn’t lost on Will as he slides across the velvet-soft lambskin leather seat.</i>
</p><p>  <i>As far as could be from anyone who regularly visits this place, for these reasons.</i></p><p>  <i>Slumming it.</i></p><p> Not quite your typical rentboy situation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Coming from the Ya'aburnee series this... is strikingly different. Fair warning, that if this feels uncomfortable for you in this chapter, perhaps consider not reading on.
> 
> That said, disturbingly, I suppose, we are having a blast writing this. Comments always welcome!
> 
> [**We also have an OST!**](http://8tracks.com/whiskeyandspite/o-d-a-l-i-s-q-u-e) As well as some amazing ficmixes made by our readers: [[x]](http://wwhiskeyandbloodd.tumblr.com/post/93632866430/mresundance-check-out-this-mix-on-8tracks-on) -=- [[x]](http://wwhiskeyandbloodd.tumblr.com/post/93907843035/a-fanmix-inspired-by-the-fantastic-fic)

Early night. Dull.

Will kicks the toes of his boots against the pavement and chews the side of his nail through the thin sweater pulled over his hands.

He could go home. He should go home. Hell, he doesn’t have to be here, with the other little boys making ends meet. He has an apartment. He has it paid for him by an allowance for college he never went to, on a scholarship he’d never wanted.

And he’s bored beyond words.

Cars crawl by along the main road, some turn off others don’t bother. He doesn’t ever offer himself to anyone with a car less expensive than his own, and this part of town is not often the route for them. It’s rarely the route for him unless he wants a quick fuck in a dark alleyway.

Slumming it.

Poor, bored little rich boy.

Will relishes it, he adores being what he is. Plays up his youth, lines his eyes, tugs on tight pants and button-ups. His hair is a disarray of curls, eyes blue enough to be unnerving.

He watches. He waits.

An unexpected beauty, unique amongst boys with lovely faces that have been made hard around the edges. Too much seen too quickly for the resilience of youth not to keep the mistrust from their eyes.

As though summoned simply by his want for it, Will sees the car at a distance. Expensive. Extremely expensive. Stripes of light cross over smooth black glistening spotless, wheels crunching only softly against the unkept street. The kind of thing meant for a world far uptown from here, nearer to the embassies and plush hotels in whose lobbies he’s found himself dallying, once or twice, to see what turns up.

He stands from the curbside and dusts his hands against his thighs. Finds the precise angle for his chin to tilt, enough to be noticed but not so much as to appear needy, and he turns a curious smile on himself when he meets his own reflection in the dark windows, tinted nearly to black.

Someone important. Someone who doesn't want to be seen.

Guileless blue eyes, blinking wide with amusement, as Will steps towards the car that is clearly waiting for him. Meant for him. He traces a hand along the smooth silver rim beneath the window. Mid-six figures, he guesses, if outfitted fully. He knows it will be, and likely customized beyond that.

A very particular vehicle for a very particular kind of person.

The door is opened for him, with only a softly intoned invitation spoken in an unfamiliar accent.

“Please.”

Dark hair swept through with the beginning of silver threads, pushed back from an older face, lines drawn against the corners of his eyes, around his mouth. Handsome. A suit that matches the car in its luxurious spotless black, above a pressed white shirt just unbuttoned to frame the collar loose against his face. Cigarette dwindling between his fingers to trail smoke from the window.

There’s something deeply decadent about it, defiling such a luminous vehicle with something so cheap as smoke. The irony isn’t lost on Will as he slides across the velvet-soft lambskin leather seat.

As far as could be from anyone who regularly visits this place, for these reasons.

Slumming it.

Will closes the door and adjusts his position: body bent into a falsely nervous curve, thumb back to his teeth before he forces his hand down, his shoulders straight. He gives the man a smile, demure, polite, keeps his eyes just down from the man's but not away.

The filter returns to thin lips, bowed, a genuinely pleasing shape to them, and the end glows orange as the man draws a breath. Will has to resist the urge to bite his lip.

A moment later, the car peels from the curb, smooth, and picks up speed quickly - taking its prize away from the unknown waters, shedding the dust of this unfamiliar and dirty world.

"I charge $500," Will says, amusement stirring in his chest as the man snorts, a derisive, dismissive sound.

"You will take what I give you,” comes the reply.

"Mmm, hence $500," Will agrees, stretches his arms over his head with a soft groan that pulls just the inappropriate side of needy, before draping then behind the seat, body open, sliding lower, legs a pleasing tangle in front of him, thighs parted.

"If I wanted my money wasted I would have dialed in," the man points out.

They reach a red light. The car slows to a halt and dark eyes turn to appraise Will. He meets them.

"So sir wisely chose better," he grins. "$500."

Hannibal hums at the title, inscrutable in the amber glow of the cigarette touched against his lips.

His attention does not drift to the curves the boy presents to him, brazen but awkward, movements that appear just slightly forced. What he thinks he's meant to do, Hannibal considers.

Play acting. A deliberate awkwardness betrayed by the quickness of Will’s eyes and the openness of his demands.

The light changes, bathing them in green rather than red, and the car takes a sharp turn smoothly.

"An aggressive demand considering where I’ve found you," Hannibal responds. "If you anticipate receiving anything near that, then I hope for your sake that I do not find you wanting."

An agreement enough, as the car purrs against the street. Late enough now that few cars surround them, early enough to still be held only by darkness and the sulfuric glow of streetlights. From the gutter to grandness, a neighborhood of enormous homes with space between them enough to breathe.

No hotel for one with money to spare on it, no motel for one with a taste for the sordid.

A looming house, refined nearly to the point of menace, as is the car. As is Hannibal.

Will watches, eyes curious, on the houses, the space, each well-maintained front yard. He's slid to sit more comfortably, now, still open but more genuine. His fingers absently fiddle with one of the sweater's mangled sleeves.

He wonders at his luck. A home like this is private, no time limit, no requirement to keep their voices low. He thinks of how he will certainly not be found wanting.

The car slides into the garage, its door humming closed behind them, and Will bites his lip. No longer the wanton game, but no less alluring, and this time the man pays attention. Will draws a hand through his hair, upsetting the curls that lay soft, long, to just above his nape, and makes a soft sound.

"Far from wanting," he answers finally, and there is an odd confidence in that, and in the smile that follows.

“We shall see,” Hannibal replies, not unkindly as his attention drops briefly from Will’s hand twisting in his hair to the curve of his lips. Another sound, a note of approval, before he leans past to open the door for him.

Before moving back again, he catches Will’s hand, fingers snared in the sleeve of his sweater, and stills it.

“Stop fidgeting.”

No room for question in his tone, before he exits the car to make his way into the house.

There is little in the house that doesn’t reflect the same elegance as Hannibal’s dress and carriage, as the vehicle in which they arrived. Careful choices made with attention to quality rather than cost, a restraint evident in the overall splendor of the place. A tendency towards the naturalistic, bones and horns, amongst plush textiles and rich patterns, the brightly colored interspersed tactfully with the understated.

He pays little mind to the boy but to motion to the stairs.

“The bedroom is directly to your right. Wait for me there.”

Will doesn't nod, doesn't make a sound to acknowledge the order at all, but he does obey it. His eyes take in the decor, the masculine choices of color without it being overbearing. There is something both utterly pleasant and underlined with danger, in this house.

Will swallows, smiles, draws his lip between his teeth, and continues slowly up the stairs.

His hand trails the smooth, expensive banister, just fingertips and the inevitable whisper of overstretched fabric after, as though wiping his prints.

He doesn't fit in here, with his tight jeans, worn combat boots, and torn sweater. Beneath, a button-up shirt of some value and quality. At the top of the stairs, Will tugs the sweater off, balls it in his hands and tosses it to the first surface he finds in the bedroom.

Here, too, the tones are muted and discreet. Maroons and blues, grays and harsh blacks when he flicks on the light. One door leads to what he supposes is a bathroom, the way the wan moonlight flits through to reflect off the floor. Another, symmetrical in the room's design, to a closet.

He goes to neither. He bends over to unlace his boots.

Hannibal toes off his shoes and pushes them neatly beside the door with his foot. Allows the boy a few moments alone as he makes his way to the kitchen to pour a glass of wine. He takes in the nose of it with a long breath, allowing it to replace the lingering smell of the street that by proxy followed him home.

A sip, as he lets himself muse, as ever, on what the boy must feel, to be plucked from his environs and delivered here. He does so enjoy when they go all wide-eyed with wonder at him, losing the false charms learned to entice less demanding clients. Overwhelmed by the promises before them, eager with surprise and greed. That much more malleable for letting their guards drop so earnestly.

Hannibal sighs with pleasure and makes his way up the stairs with wine in hand.

Though his gaze passes over the boy it moves immediately to sweater heaped on the chair beside him. A narrowing of eyes comes and goes, and he removes his coat to hang neatly in the closet.

No pretenses - no fumbling questions of names and interests, no stammering how-does-this-work’s or I-haven’t-done-this-before’s. Hannibal watches the boy - pretty enough that he wonders briefly about the circumstances in which he was found - and sits on the edge of the bed.

“You will remove your clothing,” Hannibal says, “and fold it neatly on the chair.”

He makes no move to do the same, but merely observes.

Will straightens, cocks his hips just so as he toes his boots off and deliberately kicks them under the chair. Only one stays upright, the other turned in the toss to reach its laces across the floor like seeking fingers.

He does take up the sweater to fold it, however. Not meticulous but acceptably neat. Then the shirt. Deft fingers on the buttons, bottom up, revealing a taut stomach, a chest hairless in youth more than the desire to aesthetically please.

The shirt Will hangs over the back of the chair before turning back to the man and skimming his knuckles down below his navel to the button on his jeans.

"And then?" he asks, lips tilted in a cocky, self-pleased way as the button gives, the zip fly follows. Beneath are simple cotton boxers. He manages to work his jeans free without yet pulling them down. The jeans get folded longways then thrice over, before finding their place on top of the sweater.

The boxers are removed without flourish, no attempt at sensual bends or arching, just a quick motion before Will stands nude. One hand returns to his hair, the other taps gently just below his hip.

He's clean. Toned. No signs of dirt or abuse on this body, no neglect or starvation. Will rolls his shoulders, just once, and stands still.

Curiouser and curiouser.

Hannibal picks up the cigarettes from beside the bed, taps one out and lights it languidly as he studies the boy at length, and not without appreciation for the youth bared before him. The flourish of his collarbones, the pale expanse of skin that appears untouched by the wear of his occupation, pulled sleek and firm across the curves of his hips.

Hannibal meets his eyes, and notes the sly smile that the boy is proving stubbornly resistant to losing. A resounding confidence in his own beauty and skill, although the latter has yet to be proven.

And Hannibal is nothing if not demanding in his expectations.

He removes the cufflinks from his shirt, rather than risk losing them to boyish fingers that have never handled such things, and sets them aside beside his glass of wine.

“And now you will do the same for mine.”

Palms pressed against the bed, Hannibal leans back incrementally to allow the boy room, cigarette hanging loose between his lips.

Will watches, smile widening barely at the sight, before walking the necessary distance. 

He starts with the tie, fingers careful on the knot he is unfamiliar with, then his fingers slip to the vest, working the buttons with deliberation and care he knows the other doesn't expect from him. He removes both when Hannibal lifts his arms to allow it, and folds them carefully before dropping them to the chest at the foot of the bed - he doubts the man wants his clothes touching Will’s. 

The thought desperately amuses him.

His fingers brush the middle of the pristine shirt, skimming the buttons, before he licks the corner of his top lip and pushes the man just gently further back. Without a word, he takes the cigarette from his lips and places it between his own, takes a drag.

When he moves, it’s to set his knees on either side of Hannibal’s thighs and straddle him, back bent pleasingly, now, as he sets his fingers to undoing the buttons here, as well, as casually as though he were still standing in front of the man.

He pauses, to take the cigarette between warm fingers, and exhale, filter resting against his bottom lip before it tugs it down just a little, enough, and he sets it between his teeth instead. 

The display is lovely, certainly more than Hannibal expected to find for the evening, as stirred by the sinuous movements of the youthful body astride him as he is by how calculated the gestures are, how practiced. But there is a narrow gaze, the length of a heartbeat, as he watches smoke from his cigarette trickle decadent from the boy’s mouth.

He decides to pay it no mind. Not worth the breath it would take to correct him.

Hannibal closes his eyes and allows a sigh as the boy’s long fingers splay across his chest and press upward to push his shirt back from his shoulders. He sits up to slide his arms free of it and in the same motion snaps an arm around the boy’s waist, pulling him roughly against him.

“Pants,” intones Hannibal, mouth pressed to Will’s collarbone, tasting the heat of him, clean and sweet. He doesn’t release his grip, disallowing enough space for Will to reach between them, and forcing him to bend his back further still, to reach beneath himself in order to find Hannibal’s zipper.

Will sighs, smoke unfurling around the filter where he still has it held tight between his teeth, smiles and obeys, arching back, a deliberate teasing roll of his hips before his hand seeks and finds the catch of Hannibal’s pants to undo them.

He can feel the heat against his collarbone, the teeth just below the surface of the soft lips and grins wider.

His hand seeks over the smooth silk - of course they’re silk - between his hand and the hard ridge of the man’s cock beneath, and he rubs the heel of his hand against it, feels the hands around him tighten, feels the lips draw back and the teeth against him. He brings his free hand up to remove the cigarette, lips curved to breathe the cool smoke into the room.

Carelessly, he flicks his thumb against the filter, ashing the cigarette, before bringing it back to his lips.

Hannibal counts three heartbeats, long enough for the ash to reach the floor, and on the fourth, he snatches Will by the hair, a controlled explosion of movement so fast there’s no time to account for it. He holds the boy there, soft curls stretched straight between his fingers, and brings the boy to his mouth, words soft against Will’s lips as Hannibal plucks the cigarette free from him.

“Clean that up.”

Hannibal blinks, an honest moment of surprise, as Will’s hand presses firmer against Hannibal’s cock, and feels it hardening beneath his touch.

He stands, sending the boy spilling to the floor, and only once he’s on his hands and knees does Hannibal finally shake his hair free.

“Now. With your hands, or with your mouth for all I care.”

Will gasps, eyes up and wide with the suddenness with which he’d been tossed down. His lips remain parted, and for just a moment his jaw works in a barely contained anger. He shutters it, casts his eyes down to the ash he can see against the carpet, and carefully reaches forward to take it up.

He manages most, without it rubbing into the carpet fully, and holds it in his cupped hand as he looks back up at the man standing over him. He’s still smoking, the ash again dangerously close to being tipped, and Will knows that it will be if he doesn’t obey, knows the night will go that much longer if the man’s ridiculous whims aren’t met immediately.

He swallows, shifts back on his knees, just enough, and keeps his eyes up on the man as he bends and runs his tongue over the last of the mess on the floor. It tastes bitter, dry, but it does the job. The only evidence of his apparent indiscretion is a slightly damp mark on the carpet.

Deliberately, he licks again. Then he pushes himself up on all fours and tilts his head in question.

Hannibal wets his lower lip with a brief movement of his tongue against it. He envisions tapping the ash that dwindles on his cigarette onto the boy’s back, imagines making him wait there on hands and knees all wide-eyed with his effort to please until it suits Hannibal to fuck him and finish it.

Instead, he reaches over to ash his cigarette against the ashtray, and considers tilting it onto the floor for the boy to clean that up, as well.

So many possibilites, and so little time left together.

The next drag crackles softly in the silence between them, and smoke fills his response.

“Good.”

His grasp is softer now as he catches Will’s chin in his hand to bring the boy to stand. Without releasing his jaw Hannibal circles him, nose pressed into the boy’s curls even as his hand slides slightly lower, to press just gently against his throat and draw the boy back against him.

“You will not be with me for long,” Hannibal speaks softly, “but I do not abide a mess in my home. Do you understand?” The cigarette is burnt to nearly the filter, and Will can feel the heat of it as Hannibal skims a hand along his shoulder.

Will turns his head, deliberately the other way as though wishing to turn in his own center to follow the path Hannibal has taken. He wonders, briefly, if the man will burn him. The pain doesn’t come, Will exhales.

“It is a very nice home,” he offers, voice low, but at least the compliment is genuinely meant. He tilts his head back when Hannibal’s hand slips higher up his neck to press his fingers just behind his jaw, and sighs softly.

“I understand,” he adds, and feels the smoke exhaled against his skin before the cigarette moves away. He licks his lips.

“Will you make me change the sheets after you fuck me, too?”

Hannibal strokes a thumb across the boy’s mouth when the word falls free of it. Pushes against his lips to feel them move and as they part obedient and sweet, he allows him to suck softly on his thumb, to feel the press of Will’s tongue curl against it.

“You may consider yourself lucky if I don’t insist that you lick those clean, as well.”

A quick movement of his wrist, a forward shove of his own body bends Will over the bed. Hannibal passes the cigarette over Will’s back, hand running along his spine, before he stubs it out in the ashtray.

He turns Will’s face towards him, seeking the boy’s pretty blue eyes to watch him, to see him over his shoulder. He lets his hand skim down the boy’s chest, hairless and smooth and without mark or scar, lower over his belly to feel it tighten, until he finds the thatch of dark hair between his legs and grips him, tugging slowly.

Little care for the boy’s pleasure, one would rightfully assume, the gesture intended much more for Hannibal’s own amusement. To see the boy eager and breathless beneath him, to feel his pulse already racing when Hannibal enters him.

Will makes a sound, something low in his chest that doesn’t part his lips but his eyes darken. He keeps them - perhaps obediently, perhaps spitefully - on the man behind him and arches his back against him, rubbing deliberate against the fabric of his boxers still holding his cock restrained.

The man is interesting, unusual, obviously wants Will to understand who’s in control but not like some of the idiots who push Will to call them daddy and make him beg for pain. It grows tedious, truly, to force himself to act that way but he is just as good at that as he is at being genuinely pleased, genuinely interested.

His hands shift to rest on either side of his face, curling gently in the soft fabric as he keeps rubbing his ass against the thick promise of the cock behind him, as the sounds grow slowly more frequent and breathless.

Then he closes his eyes and tries to turn his head away, to see if the hand will tighten, if his hair will suffer another brutal tug.

Hannibal allows it, stroking through the pretty curls with something that might resemble fondness in any other situation, and feigned convincingly enough in this one. The moment passes, though, and Hannibal finds himself remiss at not being able to watch the ruddy color gathering in the boy’s cheeks as he pulls slow, firm strokes against his cock.

He sighs, and jerks his fist just enough to turn the boy’s eyes back on him.

“Stay.”

A drawer opens and closes, a rustling sound, and Hannibal snares the boy by the waist, turning him over.

It would be such a waste to spend the rest of their time together without watching the blush spread across his face, to see the curve of his mouth part first in pleasure and then in fear, to miss the light that will catch and then fade from his eyes.

To pluck a bloom before it’s had time to fully blossom, and before Hannibal has enjoyed all that is has to offer.

Hannibal catches a hand beneath one of the boy’s knees and shoves him higher onto the bed, watching the way his youthful limbs splay wide across the bedcover, grasping for purchase as Hannibal forces him forward onto his hands and knees and moves over him.

Slick fingers enter Will, no teasing, no gentle stretching, just rough entry to spread him open.

Hannibal’s free hand comes to rest against the boy’s throat again, forefinger and thumb pressed to the elegant curve of his neck and squeezing softly. The pained sound that parts the Will’s flushed lips falls welcome against Hannibal’s ears as he forces his fingers deeper inside him, a harsh rhythm sudden and fierce.

Another squirm and soft cry, and Hannibal considers how the movements of the boy might feel if Hannibal ends him while he’s still inside of him.

A pleased sound at the thought.

Will gasps, brows furrowed as he works to adjust to the discomfort, finds that his thighs are splayed wide by the man’s knees where he sits so close to him, holding Will open and vulnerable to this. He bites his lip, eyes closing for a moment as he arches his neck, head back, feels the fingers squeeze harder before allowing the motion, the stretch, and simply returning to their restraint when Will settles.

His hands seek, down to stroke his own cock in languid, slow pulls, one hand against the wrist pinning him, gripping tight but not struggling. He curls his legs around Hannibal’s thighs and pushes down harder against his hand, breathless panting becoming soft keens, then louder groans of need as he strokes harder, as the feeling of fingers in his ass grows familiar and welcome.

“Mmm fuck…” Another flash of teeth against the full bottom lip, another release of it, drawing the mouth slack and beautiful. His cheeks darken, his eyes close, and he shivers pleasantly, needy and starting to come undone beneath the man that bought him.

Hannibal watches the display with rapt attention. The way Will spreads so readily to accommodate his thighs and fingers. The way he bends and curls and cries out soft with every breath that fills the lungs of a body built exquisitely to grant and yield pleasure. The perpetually intimate sensation of watching a beautiful boy touch himself, the quick abandon in the turn of his wrist, the particular tightness and loosening that Will gives himself without thought.

Equally extraordinary is the way that the flush gathers hotter in Will’s cheeks as Hannibal’s fingers cinch ever so slightly against his neck, or how he arches more sharply as Hannibal removes his fingers to press his cock into the boy instead, some minor respite granted by the presence of latex and lube, but only minor. This, now, draws a breath from Hannibal.

WIll’s voice rises, a moment, in a moan of need, and he lets go of himself to draw nails over his own thigh instead, a grounding, the pain enough to bring his eyelids to flickering, open barely but enough. He licks his lips.

He can see the way the man watches him, a hunger there that is beyond the blatant need to debauch something innocent. They both know Will is far from that. No, this runs far deeper, it runs beyond where they join, it runs to the battering of Will’s heartbeat, to the stuttering of his breath. It runs like the blood through his veins.

“Deeper,” he gasps, caught in wonder whether his words were obeyed or he simply asked at the right time when the man yanks him closer, sends an electric shiver through his spine, sends his back bending and a loud, obscene moan from him.

“Fuck.”

A low sound, lips curling just visibly over clenched teeth before Hannibal grabs the boy by the hips and effortlessly jerks him higher. Will’s shoulders dig into the bed but no more than that makes contact with it, legs cinching tight around Hannibal as he fucks deeper still, revelling in the feeling of flesh spread beneath him, loosened by him.

His hair falls loose into his face and the bed rocks from the fierce thrusts. Tip to root, bracing the boy’s hips with his hands, until even Will’s gasps and moans become stuck in his throat, lips parted wide and breathless.

Except for another broken curse, sighed quaking into the air.

Hannibal grabs him roughly by the face, fingers sinking into his cheeks and palm spread over his mouth, against his nose, to smother out his words and much of his breath along with it.

“Language,” he breathes down at the boy who watches him startled. It would be funny in any other situation but this one, with this man in particular, dark eyes shining.

Will stills, parts his lips to lick, to bite, and finds that the most he can do is moan again, eyes rolling up and closing, as Hannibal changes the angle of his thrusts and drives harder against Will’s prostate. It’s breathless and dizzying, and Will claws at the hand on his face until he’s allowed to gasp in a breath before the hand snares in his hair again and arches him back.

It feels good, so damn good, to be fucked, enjoyed properly. He feels teeth sharp against his neck and hisses, knowing it will leave a mark, a bruise. Something bad for business later. He twitches, tries to struggle away and finds his neck arched further, as the cock inside him stills, just there to rub gentle, shallow thrusting pushes against Will until he sees stars.

He drops his hand to his own cock again and strokes quickly, so close.

A helpless noise, loud, breathy, fills the room for a brief moment and fades, Hannibal’s teeth drag lower to Will’s collarbone to suck a mark there too and Will whimpers, lost in the throes of pleasure, in the heat of everything, in the animal desire of all this. The hand slips from his hair to over his mouth again, softer, but just as possessive.

He wishes, for a moment, that this didn’t have to be the end of it.

But then, he is lucky in that he often thinks the same of others. Yet there is something about this man, something dangerous and cruel and genuinely evil, that has Will’s climax hitting him hard, drawing choked sobs of pleasure from him as he near-convulses from the feeling. Hot against his hand, against his stomach, tacky and sticky and thick, and he laughs, a breathless genuine sound, as the man continues to fuck into him, using him as his muscles tremble from tightness to laxity.

And it feels _good._

A fondness softens Hannibal's features, for a moment, like a shadow passing across the sun.

The soft laugh that parts Will's lips strikes him as almost unbearably sweet, an expression of youthful joy unadulterated by anything that came before it or that has yet to come.

An expression of genuine innocence from a boy with very little left to share.

Hannibal sighs, loosens his hand from over Will's mouth, and pushes his hair back from his face to better see the pale blue beneath heavy eyelids, the warmth cascading from his cheeks down to his neck and chest, the sleepy grin that catches the corner of his mouth.

He presses slowly inside of him now, burying himself as deep as he can and murmuring approval as Will bends to ease the pressure, and Hannibal's hand lowers slow from Will's hair, to his cheek, to his jaw, and finally settles beneath his chin.

His fingers close softly, and then firmly, on the boy's throat, a sudden dizziness pulling the boy's mouth wide as the flow of blood and oxygen is cut short.

Will gasps, gasps again, finding no relief in the pressure there. His eyes seek, up, around, above him, back to the man who holds him still and keeps fucking him. The curiosity in the dark eyes that watch him sends something down Will’s spine he can’t strictly call pleasure. The fuzzy blackness around the edge of his vision grows more prominent and he twists, ducks his chin hard to catch a gasp of air before even that is taken from him.

He makes a sound, a pale little whimper compared to those filled with needy desire just before, and times his movements to the hammering of his heart against the pressure on his throat. He doesn’t have long, not with the speed the darkness is crowding him and pulling rushing water through his ears.

He counts two, twists, three, jerks, four, moans. Nothing but the tilt of a head, the narrowing of eyes in something between amusement and pleasure.

Will counts six and shoves the heel of his hand against the man’s solar plexus, surprising him enough for a loosening of the fist that holds him. He hits him again, draws his knees in, squirms back. Manages, with a groan, to dislodge the man from within him, from above him, and slips, coughing, to the floor.

Will shakes his head, scrambles back, pulls the belt from Hannibal’s pants to wind around his wrist. He knows the man will be on him in moments, a predator’s grace carried in a perfectly honed body, and he coughs again, catches his breath.

Harsh hands find him quick, a cruel yank of his hair to bring Will’s head back, up, to force him to the mattress again. Will makes no sound, nothing beyond the heavy panting of gathering breath, and avoids the hands just quick enough to press the belt to the man’s throat, pull his hands up around him as though in an embrace to flick one end of the belt over the other, to grasp both again and pull. A reverse garotte of his own.

 _Usually_ , he muses, _I kill them after they cum._

He supposes a change in routine was in order at some point.

A silent moment hangs for an instant between them, an awareness of their shared intent for the evening, even as Hannibal mourns his lost opportunity to feel youth shudder and wither around him.

Another night, perhaps.

He doesn’t bother trying to dislodge the belt and instead drives forward, a surge of strength too fast to be felt before it’s too late. The wall comes up fast behind Will and the air is knocked from his lungs, head banging back, and Hannibal snares his wrists. Fingers catch the heels of his hands, just beneath the thumbs, and jerk sharply - any harder, and bones would break, but he resists the impulse to cause undue pain despite how tempting it suddenly seems. The belt falls free and Hannibal looms over him, twisting his wrists inward against their own joints until he can force the boy to the ground.

To his knees.

“I suppose I have found you wanting after all,” Hannibal notes with genuine amusement, releasing the boy’s wrists to catch him by the hair and throat, and lift him back to his feet.

Suspended, nearly, toes scrabbling for purchase against the floor as Hannibal observes the exquisite scarlet that colors his face.

Curiouser and curiouser.

Will’s jaw sets, a pained sound escaping him, dragged through his throat that feels raw to everything. He struggles, closes his eyes to see the stars gather there instead of seeing their inverse darken his vision. It’s easier, and for a moment he even considers.

Then he twists, knee coming up to kick hard against the inside of Hannibal’s thigh, not quite where he wanted but enough to give him time to do it again, wrapping his legs around him and pushing forward, shoulders against the wall to send Hannibal back a step, hooking his legs behind Hannibal’s knees to unbalance him and set them both sprawling.

He can’t get enough air, can’t catch his breath, and coughs hard, pulls back blindly to strike out with a fist and hits something hard enough to draw a displeased noise, a sucked in breath.

Blood, hot and metallic against Hannibal’s tongue. Only his own, unfortunately, but that too can be remedied. He runs his tongue along his teeth, smearing them with the scarlet that pulses from his split lip, and he can’t help but feel a distant admiration for the way the boy fights against him.

The folly of youth.

Hannibal catches the fist as it swings to make blind contact again with the same point as before, turns it easily in on itself, and with a smooth movement jerks Will’s hand until it sits at the center of his back. He grasps the back of his neck and moves to straddle across him, knees alongside his hips.

He shoves with the hand that holds Will by the nape of his neck like a misbehaving puppy and plants the side of his face into the rug, enough to bruise, enough to stun. Enough to bring the boy to spasms of coughing as his lungs fight to regain the air they lost, restricted from the severity of how he’s held to the floor. Hannibal observes with interest as blood drips from his chin and falls against the boy’s pale skin.

He’s never encountered a bloom so fair that’s so ardently resisted being pruned, and he considers this.

“I believe the terms of our transaction have changed.”

Will moans, and this time it’s a pained sound, helpless and slightly weaker. His heart pounds against his head, he can barely breathe. The words penetrate beyond the throbbing pain of his shoulder, beyond the rough drag against his throat.

And then he laughs. 

Because he can’t help it, because he’s being pinned to the floor by a man he had planned on killing, who had apparently wanted to kill him. Because two killers in one room should not have had such an effect on his endorphins, should not have made him want to rut against the floor and beg for more of this before either one kills the other.

“Fuck you,” he parts his lips against the carpet, eyes barely open to see the fibers so close. “It’s still $500.”

He is jerked sharply by the hand around his neck and brought back down just as roughly against the carpet. Hannibal leans low over him, bringing Will’s ensnared arm just a little higher up his spine.

“Language.”

This too earns a laugh, as the boy spits blood into the carpet from a cut inside his mouth. More mess to clean, more untidiness to tend to. But the sound is as clean and clear and crisp as the one the boy allowed when he came enthusiastically across his own belly, an alarming brightness considering his current position.

Hannibal releases his hold on Will’s neck to instead stroke himself, quick functional things, a few times to bring himself back to hardness. The sound of skin against skin is all the boy can hear for a moment as his wrist is still held in place, until Hannibal speaks again with a dulcet amusement.

“Then it appears that you will need to fulfill your end of our agreement.”

His fingernails digging sharp into Will’s skin to spread him roughly, lining himself up and pressing into him without even the faint assistance of spit, driving roughly into whatever lubrication yet remains and otherwise unbothered by the sharp, jerking squirm of the boy held beneath him.

Will groans, turns his head to press his forehead against the floor and arch his back that way, content for the moment to just catch his breath, take what’s given to him. It doesn’t take long, violence obviously a similar trigger for the man as it is for Will, and the grip eases just enough on Will’s arm to no longer feel like it’s about to be dislocated.

Though he can’t decide if it already has been.

He groans, low, and rubs his forehead against the floor.

He’s bleeding, he’s fairly sure from more than one place, he aches, throbs, feels utterly alive with it.

“You’re the best fuck I’ve had all week,” he confides, his grin evident in the tone.

Satisfied enough for the moment not to drive Will into the carpet until his mouth is full with it instead of the crude words, Hannibal shudders, barely perceptible, as echoes of his release uncoil in his limbs.

He withdraws from the boy, pleased by the quiet cry that the boy issues in response. Leaning back, Hannibal runs the back of his hand along his mouth, smearing blood across his face, across his hand.

“You are the luckiest I’ve had,” Hannibal responds, with something like amusement.

He can’t recall their faces now, any names they offered, anything remarkable at all about the boys who have come into his house and never left. They all thrash, struggle, kick, scream but nothing like this - none so clever as to use tools against him to compensate for being outmatched in speed and strength, none so bright as to have considered killing him instead of begging for mercy.

The others pale into nothingness by compare.

It seems unfair to reward such courage with death when the struggle was so much more enjoyable than the murder might have been. Hannibal runs his free hand over the boy’s shoulder. Finds the ligaments stretched, but not torn - he’ll have a full range of movement once he ices it and gives it a few days.

He releases Will’s wrist and stands, lingers there a moment, feet on either side of the lovely boy bare and bruised and bleeding beneath him, and allows a faint smile.

Will lays still and catches his breath, for the moment sure he won’t be attacked again, and fairly certain that were he to be, he would find a way to remind the man that one didn’t just need hands and legs, one had elbows, nails teeth… the thought makes him groan quietly and he shifts to hold himself up on all fours.

His face throbs, feels raw where the man had driven it against the carpet. His nose is bleeding but not obscenely, lining the nostrils and dripping slowly from the left. His mouth tastes like salt and metal, and he can feel the cut when he tongues for it, shallow but bleeding enough to be a nuisance. 

Will’s arms shake.

He pushes himself to settle on his ass, with a quiet hiss at the pressure there. He doesn’t look up for a long time, but when he does, his teeth are tinged red as he shows them in a grin.

His blood still hums with the hunt, with the desire to render something dead, like any number of tricks before this one, any number of men who had called Will ‘baby’, who had abused and tormented him, who had treated him like their only little lover, and pampered him. The man before him now, Will wants to tear apart as strongly as he wants the man’s hands on his skin again, his lips sucking marks against him, his cock fucking deep.

He swallows, sniffs and brings up his knuckles - raw from the carpet, too - to stem the blood from his nose.

“You gonna try and kill me again?” he asks, brows furrowing as he looks at his hand, before setting it back behind himself for balance, and looking up at the man through messy hair.

Hannibal watches the boy at his feet and sighs. It’s a wholly new sensation, failure, and to some degree he’s grateful for the rare experience. His fingers press through the boy’s curls, almost gentle until they twist just tightly enough to move him, to press the boy’s battered face against his thigh. He sucks the blood from his teeth and watches Will’s lips part against his skin, tracing kisses, smearing blood.

Hannibal draws a breath.

A strange boy, a familiar need coursing through him remarkably similar to the one Hannibal knows all too well. For blood, for violence, for boundless thrill of seeing the illumination of a life snuffed into darkness forever. A strange boy who should have been easy enough to consume in all the ways he had initially intended, if the bright-eyed beauty of him were anything to go by. Hannibal’s eyes crinkle just a little at the corners, pleased by the surprise that his misjudgment has yielded.

“Yes,” he acknowledges, “but not tonight.”

Hannibal releases the boy’s hair with a quick pull, enough to force him to catch himself on his hands again, and walks past him. He spares a glance to the boy’s bent form, bruises dawning dark across his pale skin and the promise of blood in the trickle that draws a line down his thigh.

“You will put your clothes on and go. Move quickly before I reconsider my decision.”

A threat, a promise, it doesn’t really matter, both equally dangerous and equally tempting. He slides back into his pants, leaving them undone, and removes his wallet to pull free the money the boy demanded of him.

Worth the cost, for the amusement alone.

Will considers it, considers the offer, considers the bills that lie crisp and barely folded on the floor beside him. He doesn’t see Hannibal again when he pulls his clothes on with a wince, when he deliberately uses the man’s shirt to wipe the blood from his face before tossing it to the bed.

He leaves the money on the floor.

Worth a freebie, for the amusement alone.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _It requires an effort, a rare enough occurrence, to maintain the look of absolute indifference in light of the guileless enticement watching him from across the table._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so the fun continues.
> 
> Think of this as... Dorian Gray meets Leon the Professional meets dark Lolita ;)

It’s colder.

Will tugs absently at the loose leather coat he has on top of the stretched sweater, the usual button-up. Few of the boys are out, today, just the most desperate. He wonders if perhaps it’s worth it to just direct his attentions their way. They would be much easier targets, much less likely to be believed were something to go wrong.

And yet far less satisfying.

Something about knowing that your power is in your weakness, that your control is entire - in pleasure, later in pain. The thrill of it sets Will’s back straighter, his bottom lip between his teeth, and he scans the street again. Any cars. Any at all. He’ll lower his standards for a fuck and the aftermath of one tonight - he hasn’t been out for two weeks, recovering.

He sees the lights first, then the slow crawl of a car specifically seeking. Yet it stops by no one, drives right by Will and turns the corner. He huffs, watching his breath steam in the air and dissipate, bitter disappointment and colder weather.

But then he hears it, the soft purr of the engine, the slick whine of a window winding down.

He’s across the road before he can think twice about it, putting it down to the cold, to the boredom, to the blatant utter need for it.

This time he opens the door himself.

This time, he takes the cigarette from between those rough, warm fingers and tosses it through the window before covering the man’s lips with his own to stifle a snarl. It’s harsh, a kiss filled with sharp teeth and pressure, and Will makes a noise so soft it’s lost between them.

Hannibal snares the boy by the jaw, holds him still in harsh fingers and forcefully parts the brutal kiss. Their eyes meet, looming darkness swallowing sky like thunderclouds black and heavy, and on his own terms leans in to part the boy’s mouth with his tongue, fingernails digging into his cheek.

Will’s movement is dizzying, grasping hands and hungry mouth and all with desperate sounds that make Hannibal’s blood feel warmer as it spreads through his limbs. He grasps the boy by the hair at the nape of his neck and bends him, pulls their mouths apart again to instead drag his tongue along the boy’s throat, to feel him swallow and then sigh against the vibrations of the little noises he makes.

He insinuates his skinny body in one lithe movement between Hannibal and the steering wheel, legs spread across Hannibal’s lap in the driver’s seat. Hannibal presses his fingers into the inside of the boy’s thigh, squeezing through his jeans until Will makes a sound.

“You will take what I give you.” A low reminder, a purring accent, against the boy’s neck where his teeth catch to hold the boy still in his squirming.

"Fuck," Will gasps, stills, for the moment, as he's held. "Yes."

He arches back, feels the hot lips seek to devour him as they had their last meeting, like feeling a tiger nuzzle your hand, knowing it only wants to make your smell familiar to it before it opens its jaws to carnage.

He groans, warm and pleased, shifts closer still.

"Let me -"

"You will do as I say, when I say it," Hannibal instructs. No talk of money or services now, a negotiation far beyond any such mundane expression of carnality.

He knows even as the boy agrees to the terms with a gasp, he'll disobey with just as much enthusiasm. Hannibal hums approval for this as much as the agreement, moving his mouth against Will's neck, up just beneath his jaw where his fingers choked weeks before.

He lets Will grind and twist and rock against his lap, does not offer more than teeth against his neck and a fist in his hair.

"The other boys are watching. Wondering what makes you so lucky. Do you think yourself special?"

Will makes an aching, needy sound and laughs, the warmer, softer version of the laugh that had stilled Hannibal's hand the last time.

"Lucky," he repeats, arching closer, feeling Hannibal hard between his legs even as he acts indifferent.

"You think me special." Will points out, wanting to draw his hands through the dirty blonde hair and mess it from its deliberate tidiness. "You want to hurt me again, you ache for it."

Will goes when the fingers snare tighter in his hair, tilt him further back.

"You tried to kill me. I wouldn't let you. You are as deeply entwined with me as I am with you." He wants Hannibal’s mouth again, his rough hands, his cock…

Hannibal lets go of Will’s hair, removes the hot press of his mouth against the boy’s skin and leans back into the plush leather. Lets him free to roam, to grope, to reach between his own legs to rub Hannibal’s cock through his pants.

“If at first you do not succeed…” Hannibal considers, and Will grins, eyes narrowing on him with a perverse delight.

Were there more room, he’d fuck him then and there. Let Will ride him to exhaustion, and then dump him right back where he found him to tug his pants up in front of the other boys as the Bentley disappeared.

He skims his hands along the boy’s back, eyes closing as Will makes a high, soft noise against Hannibal’s throat, and knows that as much as it would please him to see the boy discarded so abruptly, it would leave neither as satisfied as they could be.

“In truth,” Hannibal admits softly, drawing the backs of his fingers down the boy’s cheek, “I want nothing more than to watch you bleed, and know that this desire alone is the reason you remain alive.”

Will bites his lip, doesn't turn into the hand caressing him. These words, too, send heat to pool in his belly. He can’t get enough of this man. Perhaps he is lucky...

"I can bleed, for you, but I won't die." It's teasing, like a game. Will wonders when the tendency to covet death sprung up in his subconscious, he wonders what factors in his utterly normal upbringing connected hard enough to create a spark.

He rolls his hips, languid, and laments the small space, the way the wheel digs into his back. It makes him think of awkwardness and high school, fumbling with zippers and buttons, uncoordinated kisses and whispered promises.

"Buy me dinner this time," he suggests, grinning. “We have all night and intimate enough knowledge to skip the pleasantries of foreplay. Fuck me, bleed me, feed me. But don't lie to yourself that you haven't missed me."

The boy’s insistence that the continuance of life isn’t being decided moment by moment in Hannibal’s fleeting whims strikes him as charming. This prideful grasping for control, so naive as to think his fate actually lingers in anyone’s hands but Hannibal’s draws a bare smile across the older man’s mouth that does nothing to lessen the darkness in his eyes.

He takes in the boy’s dress - the tattered sweater, which Hannibal notes to himself to dispose of when the boy’s got it off again, and skinny jeans and those hideous boots. Hannibal slides his hand from Will’s thigh to his stomach, beneath his shirt, and curls his nails against his stomach. He’s not been without food, well-fed in fact compared to the other boys always so hungry and frail, and Hannibal finds himself overcome by a particular sort of whimsy.

“Dinner, then,” Hannibal decides, with worryingly little hesitation.

Ignoring the clever grin that brightens and darkens Will’s features all at once, Hannibal grasps him by his skinny hips and removes him from his lap, stuffing him sprawling back into the passenger seat.

Will goes, with a laugh, and rearranges his limbs enough to comfortably sit, slipping the seatbelt across himself and clipping it in. It amuses him to no end that the seat beneath him is heated.

They don’t talk as they drive, neither willing to expend the energy to pretend that this is a normal evening, they have no one to pretend for. Will runs the side of his thumb lightly over his lip, just catching the edge of his nail against the thin skin. He can feel anticipation build beneath his skin, warm like stroking fingers, tickling, needling, utterly pleasant.

He brings one foot up to rest against the edge of the seat, can feel Hannibal tense at the sight of it, relishes in that. He stretches languid, until he’s splayed and comfortable, and Hannibal’s knuckles are white against the wheel.

Will patiently waits for the first red light.

The car has no sooner slid to a stop than the flat of Hannibal’s hand cracks across the boy’s thigh, stinging even through jeans and sending his foot to the floor.

“Do it again and I’ll leave you barefoot.”

He does not touch him again, doesn’t spare him a look outside of his periphery, despite the boy’s fidgety little attention-seeking adjustments and winsome looks and the hand that rests just against the inside of his thigh where Hannibal slapped him.

They arrive to a small restaurant, obscured windows hung with heavy rich curtains inside to shield those who eat there from any prying eyes deemed unworthy to join them. It does not appear at first to be a grand establishment, but those that are best are usually smart enough to appear - at least on the surface - far from ostentatious. They pull up to a valet and Hannibal waves past him, unwilling to let anyone else inside his vehicle, parking it himself instead.

“What is your name?” Perfunctory, generally disinterested beyond knowing what he’s going to snarling against the boy’s ear later, and a far cry from the stammering obligatory curiosity of anyone else who’s ever picked Will up.

Will’s eyes slide to him, careful, brighter than before, in the dark of the car. There is a pleasant hot flush in his cheeks, still, his hair in perfect bed-head disarray, rendering his entire appearance almost painfully youthful. He bites his lip, deliberately, and watches Hannibal’s jaw lock in a mixture of frustration and lust.

A pause, and then -

“Will Graham,” he says, a softness to the words that suggest genuine honesty. He regards the older man carefully before licking his lips, turning to rest sideways against the seat - feet obediently down - as Hannibal navigates the car into a space with expert precision.

“Quid pro quo?”

Hannibal parks, removes his keys, and lets his hands slide almost affectionately over the wheel. A last name - unexpected, but appreciated.

He turns to the boy enough to wrap a hand around the back of his neck and bring him close. All the resistance to his coy little gestures throughout the ride is relieved in a kiss that’s nearly suffocating, holding it until Will’s heart starts to race from the restriction of his breath beneath Hannibal’s mouth.

Remembers the first thing that Will - as he knows him to be now - called him on their first evening together, and muses briefly over giving him only the title ‘sir’ to use, but it reeks of tastelessness and there’s little that Hannibal can abide less.

“Hannibal,” he responds, as earnest as the boy’s pleasure at hearing it, and he leans past him to open his door.

Hannibal steps ahead of Will at the entrance to the restaurant. It is dark inside, low lights glowing stark against the walls, small tables set with puzzling arrays of small dishes and smaller servings of ornate creations, and a clientele that reflects the exclusive - and expensive - interior.

A brief conversation between Hannibal and the host, and a small gesture of movement exchanged between them, before they are escorted to the chef’s table. Far from even the secrecy granted each individual table, a bank of expensive couches with a table between them.

He’s unable to resist showing a deep amusement as he takes in the boy’s scruffy clothes, painfully out of place amongst such understated finery as this.

Will’s eyes wander, take in everything in quick flicks of motion suggesting a practiced thing, a memory bank, information gathering and storing to be sorted later. Another fascinating little turn that Hannibal finds rather pleasing. The boy is certainly not stupid.

When Will sits he rests his hands clasped together on the table, tugging absently, again, at the loose threads in his sleeve. He doesn’t stop when Hannibal pointedly watches him, he just smiles and slows his movements.

“Grace of Ba’al,” he says quietly, smiling wider at Hannibal’s gentle tilt of the head, suggesting curiosity or surprise. The man is like a book Will is careful to turn the pages of.

“Lord,” he intones, smiling wider, “owner.”

He presses his bottom lip out of shape momentarily before directing his eyes to Hannibal’s lips instead. 

“Apt.”

“Perhaps those names are the ones I should have given you instead,” Hannibal responds, amused and surprised both. Already more interesting than every other conversation combined that he’s been dragged into with this sort. The words bear a particular, unrefined elegance from this boy’s mouth.

Wine is brought for them, explained, and left to their leisure, the first of many on the tasting menu that will be brought to their table without needing to worry about anything so mundane as making choices.

“It seems that both our names suit our particular characteristics,” he continues, attention drifting to the movement of Will’s fingers against his sweater sleeve, and then back again.

They draw attention, even in a place as prone to privacy as this. A sharply-dressed older man and a scruffy youth of scarcely eighteen years, if even at that, draw an occasional look, a passing murmur, and Hannibal pays them no mind beyond a brief twist of pleasure.

“Tell me, Will. What do you do with your day?” He normally wouldn’t bother with small talk - normally wouldn’t bother to bring a street boy here, or anywhere, actually - but it’s difficult not be intrigued when said street boy begins to cite ancient Phoenician.

Will takes up the wine, tops up his glass enough to certainly grind on Hannibal’s nerves before taking a careful sip. It’s expensive, rich, heavier than what Will usually drinks, if he drinks. He savors it, allows the flavor to settle before returning the glass to the table, fingers caressing the stem in a way that could not be misconstrued as innocent.

“Occasionally I show up to my assigned lectures,” he says, tone carefully lazy but quiet enough to remain polite. He pushes his bounds only enough to get a rise, to watch the barely-there snarl cross Hannibal’s features when he does.

“Criminology, psychology, forensic linguistics.”

He takes up the glass again, watching Hannibal over the rim as he sips, licks his top lip clean, leaves the bottom barely damp with red.

“Occasionally I read.”

His head tilts gently, and he stretches his legs out under the table, close enough to know approximately where Hannibal is in relation, not making an effort, yet, to touch.

“Occasionally I fuck and take my fill of carnage,” he grins. “And you?”

Hannibal watches the wine vanish in two sips and makes a small sound. He considers the cost of it, disappearing past red-stained lips, and takes up the bottle to refill Will’s glass to nearly full.

“A student, then, of many disciplines.”

Another pull of wine disappears past parted lips, fingers curled beckoning against the bottom of the glass. A flush colors his cheeks, no shyness in this boy now, a building scent of arousal in the shift of his shoulders and the glint in his eyes, and wine rushing hot to youthful cheeks.

He draws a breath as a desire passes through him to pin the boy down and lick the taste of wine from lips not yet legally allowed to partake in it, to hear what he thinks he knows of carnage and to give him a true understanding of that word.

Hannibal releases the sigh, softly, inclining his head as the first course is brought to them. He makes no move to eat, fixated on the clever little thing slumped across from him with far more hunger than food could satisfy.

“I am a doctor,” he finally answers. “A surgeon, once, and a psychiatrist now. We share many of the same hobbies, otherwise.”

It will have to end tonight, Hannibal realizes with a little disappointment. He’s already shared his car, home, name, and work both paid and for pleasure with the boy - more than enough room to see him hung for his proclivities, or at the very least blackmailed.

He sips his wine, a silent toast to the brevity of their time together.

Will’s brows rise, pleasure, surprise behind the gaze, and he sets his own glass down unfinished to start on the meal.

It’s difficult to explain how something can taste expensive, but the food before him certainly does. Every flavor is rich, layered, coming apart against his tongue in the most pleasing way until Will makes a soft sound, a gentle moan of appreciation, and deliberately avoids Hannibal’s eyes just to have the man seek his out.

That feeling of power crests again and Will’s heart beats a little faster.

“You left surgery to dissect the mind?” Will asks at length, surprisingly cultured as he enjoys his dinner, despite his appearance and deliberate goading prior that suggested quite the opposite. His smile is easier, now, with wine warming his bones, and he finishes this glass as well, just to watch Hannibal reach to pour him another.

“They told me,” he starts, eyes on the red liquid as it pours, settles, stills. “That I would be able to catch bad men because I could think like them. Get into their minds, under their skin.”

His eyes flick up.

“So to law enforcement my paths took me. Taught me well.” Another curve of his lips, red tongue against them before he draws nails softly down the stem, back up, and takes the glass from the table.

“And I’m an excellent student.”

He sets the wine away, a significant portion drunk, and returns to his meal, noticing how Hannibal has yet to touch his.

“In actuality, I simply wanted to be a mechanic.”

He’s either an extraordinary liar, or he’s being entirely honest, and both possibilities intrigue Hannibal equally. If the boy is being genuine, then it would make him something of a prodigy, to have done so much in his meager years.

Perhaps as equally adept with his other skills.

“A mechanic,” Hannibal repeats, amused, as he finally tastes the food in front of him to little reaction. “The pursuit of an analytical mind. Not one happy to be confined to the halls of academia and publishing papers, but eager to get their hands dirty, to speak. To break things apart, and see how they work.”

He takes a sip of wine, as the second course and the accompanying bottle is brought to them. Keeping Will’s wine full, when appropriate, to watch him drink and to see the loose warmth settle through still-awkward limbs, long and lovely.

“I left surgery for more fertile grounds. There are only so many ways in which the human body differs with any substantial interest. We are all, predominantly, the same inside. It is in the mind that you begin to discover truly unique configurations. Contradictions and curiosities. Unexpected surprises.”

Hannibal’s eyes follow the movement of Will’s fingers against the glass, sleeve still draped over his hand, an enticing inelegance at odds with the skillful negotiation of his conversation.

“In your learning, have you not found a teacher who speaks to your particular style of study?”

“I’ve found settling myself into a single field, or a single element holds me confined. I feel collared,” he tongues just the corner of his mouth with a smile, takes up the new glass poured for him. This wine is lighter but no less enjoyable.

“Restrained.” He sets the glass down, licks his lips.

“It curls my mind to dust. I rarely seek out my teachers now, interested in their work as they are, advanced in their field, they are just as muzzled.”

Will settles back, brings his thumb to his lips again to rest his teeth against the nail. His eyes narrow, he can feel the way the wine affects him, the way it weighs his limbs in pleasant laxity. His lips tilt in a smile and he slides further in his seat, finally finds Hannibal’s feet with his own.

“Would you be so restraining in your teaching, Hannibal?” he asks, brows up to add to that innocent wide-eyed look, the words previously emphasized sitting too prettily in promise against him now.

“Constrain to just teach one field and style?”

No reaction to the press of feet against his, to the booted toes that drag against the leg of Hannibal’s pants. He imagines the grime from them, lips pressing together in faintest displeasure, before the expression eases back to inscrutable neutrality.

It requires an effort, a rare enough occurrence, to maintain the look of absolute indifference in light of the guileless enticement watching him from across the table.

“Would I ever feel inclined to pursue teaching, I imagine that I would be an extraordinarily demanding teacher,” Hannibal responds after a moment’s consideration. His hand curls around the glass of wine, finger tracing the rim in a seemingly absent gesture that’s anything but. “While I have much to offer by way of experience, my expectations are,” a pause, weighted, and a faint smile, “exceedingly difficult to satisfy.”

He finishes his wine, the food ignored as it is brought before him, the previous course taken away.

“I have yet to encounter any potential student who I’ve felt would be capable of meeting them.”

Will watches, smiles wider, and reaches to take up his own glass again, lingering for a moment bent forward as he is, before sitting back and sipping.

“I pity the boys who’ve tried to catch your eye,” he says, smile laying smooth across his lips before he drags his teeth over the bottom one pointedly. “I pity those who did, much, much more. And yet -”

Another sip, longer, to fill his mouth before he swallows, sets the glass back to the table with just a little at the bottom.

“- I find I pity you most,” he tilts his head, “Starved for company, for anything of genuine interest in the pursuit of an unattainable ideal.”

For a moment, one brief moment, Will looks genuinely sorry. Then his eyes narrow, his cheeks flushed darker now, and he tilts his chin up.

“Though I did not take you to be shy, Hannibal. You’ve brought me here,” he leans forward, curls his arms against the table and rests his head on top, drawing looks for the impolite unorthodox way of using the table. “Won’t you just ask? I may even say yes.”

Hannibal breathes a note that could be a laugh, eyes crinkling in genuine pleasure at the boy’s brashness. His insolence. His absolute denial of how this night will invariably end for him.

“Dear Will, I assure you - I am starved for nothing.”

His fingers flex, curl back against the glass, aching to reach out and jerk the boy back to sitting straight.

“You seem inclined to believe that the burden of proof is on me, to show you my credentials,” he intones, voice lowering, softening even. The whisper of a blade against bare skin, the rasp of leather sliding tight. “I recall that your last attempt to show me your prowess ended with you sobbing into my carpet.”

The words pass just as the main course is delivered.

“We are quite finished - thank you,” Hannibal informs the waiter, reaching into his pocket to loosen a credit card for him. The man appears briefly surprised but does not hesitate to depart, and Hannibal’s eyes narrow, just so.

Will’s eyes widen, just enough for the want and need and lingering fear to fill the pupils. He smiles at the words, doesn’t bother to shift from the position he’s bent over in - the jacket and sweater have ridden up just enough to reveal the pale skin of his back.

“And I recall,” Will replies softly, “that you pulled over this evening specifically for me.”

His lips press together gently, eyes on Hannibal’s, a mongoose and a snake waiting for the right time to each strike or turn away.

Will blinks first.

“My prowess may not be strength. In fact, far from it.” Will licks his lips. “My skill is intrigue. Curiosity. And, as I recall,” he tilts his head, eyes narrowed again in youthful, prideful joy, “I have certainly piqued yours.”

“You have,” Hannibal responds in earnest, but with no easing the undercurrent of menace in his tone. “Whether or not you can keep it remains to be seen.”

He presses his napkin to his mouth, an almost delicate gesture, and moves to stand.

“I hope, for your sake, that you can.”

A glimpse of pale skin disappears beneath the boy’s clothing as he sits up, affecting the promise of a stretch as he does, uncurling feline and languid from where he rested limber with wine against the table. Hannibal watches him openly, the lip caught between his teeth, the cocky glint in his eyes, the youthful tone of his body as he moves to exit the restaurant in front of Hannibal, at the older man’s gesture to do so.

Hannibal envisions, for a moment, the boy unclothed and blood-soaked, scarlet staining sticky thick against his flawless flesh, dripping dark and thick from his mouth to run in beads along the curves of his neck. Beaming that infuriating grin, curls dry and stiff with gore.

They are scarcely back in the Bentley before Hannibal has him by the wrist, pulling the boy roughly to him, to his mouth, jaw tight as he speaks against the boy’s wine-stained lips.

“Ask.” Heart shuddering faster as the boy’s eyes widen so close to his own, expanses of blue darkening beneath the spread of pupil.

“Here?” Will’s tone is surprised, pleased, barely breathed against Hannibal who pulls deliberately out of reach when he bends closer. So Will licks his lips and smiles, leans back against the car and arches up in a stretch against Hannibal.

“Tell me what you were thinking just then,” he asks, “At the table before you paid the check. What did you want to do to me?”

Hannibal feels the boy’s prying like fingers, forcing images behind his eyes, drawing them out of him, and he is briefly, unfamiliarly overwhelmed by the sensation of someone working so easily inside of him. Especially this particular someone, curving wanton as though Hannibal’s nails weren’t leaving bruises against his wrist.

“I was imagining you at your studies,” Hannibal answers low. “Stripped bare but for the remains of whomever was unlucky enough to choose you as their partner for that particular lesson.”

Will’s eyes go wide, his breathing stills and for a moment, he looks genuinely utterly innocent. The images rush through his mind as they had through Hannibal’s; just as vivid, just as stunningly contrasted and saturated in their reality. Will’s lips stay parted but he closes his teeth gently together to swallow.

“Teach me,” he breathes. “Everything. Make me learn it.”

His bottom lip is tugged up between his teeth again and his eyes search between Hannibal’s for a few brief moments.

“If your curiosity wanes, kill me.”

His cheeks flush darker, eyes already so blown it’s hard to tell their usual clear-blue tint. And slowly, Will allows a smile again, arching his back to bring his lips close enough to Hannibal’s to feel.

“Please,” he adds.

Outside of Hannibal’s control, a breath cuts short at the offer, the suggestion, the request that is sighed so genuinely against his mouth. There is a sweetness to it, intoxicating as the wine still clinging to the boy’s tongue, and Hannibal chases the taste of it with his own, a low sound building behind the kiss that he drives against Will.

“I will,” he finally answers, licking the taste from his lips before he releases Will’s wrist, unlocks the car, pushes Will aside to get in on his own.

Resisting the urge to alleviate his arousal in the back seat, he pulls out sharply, and makes for the house.

“Tell me, then,” Hannibal suggests, glancing to the boy stretching pleased and limber, beside him. “Your last.”

Will arches, body already sleepy with the wine warming it, makes a near-obscene sound when he does.

“My last,” he starts, brings up a foot to rest it on the seat, remembers, and sets it back to the floor. “Refused to die,” he reminds Hannibal, tone almost playful, before he tilts his head and sets his eyes to the roof of the car and answers properly.

“He was younger than you, some asshole who claimed he had to have me,” Will barely blinks, a gesture oddly close to an eyeroll. His tongue parts his lips, he continues. “He had me. Bent me over a desk and had his way. Left a mess on my back, a claim, he’d called it. Proud, arrogant. Really quite beautiful in his faults.”

Will stretches forward, back sliding further down the leather seat - still heated - as his legs spread and his hand slides against his inner thighs, just stroking.

“I smashed him with a bottle,” he bites his lip, “The wine softened the metallic aftertaste when I licked it from his skin.”

Curls clinging sweat-soaked to his skin, still flushed from sex and tongue pressing to lap up blood-dark wine from cooling skin, eyes alight with pleasure.

Hannibal swallows, mouth working in a thoughtful way as the images play behind his eyes.

He tries not to watch as Will’s fingers draw absent lines against the inside of his thighs and imagine them as his own instead, digging into that soft skin until the boy cries his name.

His fingers tighten against the steering wheel, palms working against the leather.

“My last became a rather elegant quiche, despite the foul mouth,” Hannibal offers in exchange. “Fresh goat cheese, seasonal greens from the market. I may still have some if you’re hungry later.”

Will looks over, head cocked, as his fingers work slowly higher up his thighs towards the obvious bulge in his jeans.

“You eat them?” he asks softly. There is no horror in the words, just genuine fascination, curiosity, almost awe. He laughs, a low, pleased noise, and presses one palm against himself, rocking his hips up against the pressure there.

“Making elegance out of depravity,” Will groans, bites his lip, forces his eyes to open slowly to watch Hannibal as he keeps touching himself.

“Perhaps you can tempt me with that for breakfast.” That wicked grin is back, teasing, proud, and Will curls his fingers around his cock through his jeans harder.

Uncertain if it’s the boy’s unfazed response to this situation, or the way he grinds against his own hand arching up off the seat, Hannibal glances sidelong at him now, for as long as he can manage before forcing his eyes back to the road.

“Why do you think I was so pleased to find you?” Hannibal replies. “You’re far less starved than the rest of them.”

A blessed red light allows him to watch, for a moment, and his tongue parts his lips.

“Pull down your pants and do it properly. Do not finish in my car.” A pause, considering. “Do not finish until I tell you that you may.”

The car jerks past the green light, foot heavier on the gas now.

Will makes a quiet sound and hooks his thumb over the waistband before bringing his other hand up to fumble with the zipper and button. He lets his eyes close, his lips part, and lifts his hips to slide the jeans and boxers he wears down his thighs.

His cheeks flush bright, being so exposed, tinted windows around him but the feeling of being seen just as prevalent. He arches off the chair when his hand circles his cock, one foot drawing back to balance himself against the onslaught of pleasure, and Hannibal’s words suddenly seem so much crueller.

“But I want you to touch me,” he breathes, hand moving obediently over himself until his breathing comes harsher, his legs tremble.

He tries not to think of Hannibal, covered in blood as Will himself had been, standing over the body of an unfortunate idiot, savoring the blood, the death around him. He tries.

“All the more reason for you to wait for it.”

Hannibal makes a thoughtful noise, watching the quick movements of Will’s wrist over himself, observing the undulating clench of muscles in his stomach, just visible where Will’s other hand has slid beneath his shirt to press against his skin.

Despite his own statement, Hannibal finds he can’t deny this to the boy, or more particularly, himself. He resettles enough to lean, and wets a finger against the boy’s lips, pushing against them until it’s damp enough. Forcing his hand beneath the boy, Hannibal rubs firm against his opening, hot sensitive skin twitching beneath his touch.

“I wonder,” he continues, “if I’ve eaten anyone that you know.”

Will’s panting grows quicker, draws with it some desperate, needy little noises, and he pushes himself lower, legs parting wider, hips up to feel Hannibal press harder against him.

“Oh,” it’s a gasp, not an answer, and Will doesn’t even linger on the words - he doesn’t care. Boys had gone missing from the street all the time, police did little more than mention their names, contact their families if there were any to contact. And Will would see their names come up on the slides in lectures.

“Fuck,” Will’s hand stills, tightens around his cock to keep himself at bay, “Fuck!”

He feels Hannibal continue to tease, a merciless massage where Will wants penetration, where he wants to feel that stretch again, harsh, quick, and utterly worth it.

“If you ate me out,” he gasps, grinning, “Then you fucken will have.”

A moment of genuine surprise at the lewd suggestion, dripping wine-thick from the boy beside him, but there - there, in and around and between the demand that Hannibal would almost certainly indulge, is...

“Language,” Hannibal breathes, and withdraws his finger from the firm circles it was drawing. Withdraws his hand entirely, actually, from beneath Will as he pulls into the driveway and the garage door closes behind them.

Delights in the speechless fury that settles over Will’s pretty features.

“The next time I need to remind you, I’m going to start removing teeth every time you do it,” Hannibal warns, exiting the car with the knowledge that the boy will follow. He makes no move towards him when he does, avoids looking towards his flustered frown or the achy little noises he makes.

Pretends that they don’t call to him and beg for every fiber in his being to snap tight and pin the boy to the wall by his throat and fuck him until he’s unable to do more than crawl.

Will does the fly up on his jeans but not the button, following Hannibal with his hands deep in his pockets, teeth grit against the friction the fabric draws over his cock. He follows Hannibal through the back door, from the garage to the hallway, he follows him to the entry where Hannibal meticulously removes his shoes, his coat, leaves them and moves upstairs. Will leaves his boots and follows.

His blood hums with the threat, with the knowledge of full follow-through. He feels like a chastised child and wonders, briefly, for his own sick amusement, how much older Hannibal is, than him.

When they reach the bedroom, Will steps closer, insinuates himself against Hannibal’s chest and leans up to kiss him. The same hungry, needy, desperate way he had kissed him earlier that evening. The same quiet plea behind the obvious demand for attention.

He relishes in the man’s arms around him, gripping his shoulders, tensing his own beneath Will’s seeking hands. It’s intoxicating, empowering, and Will is utterly shameless when he rolls his hips against Hannibal’s, when he breaks the kiss on a half-whimpered moan, and ducks his head to watch them rub together.

The wanton grind of the boy’s cock against his own, equally hard, pulls a hard exhalation from Hannibal. He’s drunk, certainly, having finished nearly an entire bottle of wine on his own, his movements a little clumsy now in his intoxication, in his eagerness, given over to a thoughtless drive for sex and violence that makes Hannibal’s blood sing in his ears. Hannibal tastes the heady mixture of alcohol and desire that seeps through the little sounds he makes, crushing them beneath his mouth again before he turns the boy and pulls him roughly back against him.

He sighs against his neck, turns his face into his hair to feel the soft, well-tended curls against his skin, and shoves their hips roughly together. His fingers tug down the boy’s fly, thumbs pressing down the waistband of his pants and boxers, and he watches as they slide past narrow hips to just beneath the curve of his ass. Baring him to feel the heat of the boy’s skin grind back against his erection through the expensive material in his pants.

“Your skill is not in strength,” Hannibal finally agrees, a rough murmur. “But certain movements, properly executed, do not require it.”

Hannibal skims a hand over the boy’s chest, feeling his heart thunder beneath his ribs, and presses his palm beneath his jaw. His other hand grips the crown of Will’s head, fingers lacing through his hair, and both hands tighten. Slowly, they turn, forcing his head to the side, and Will gasps to feel his vertebrae pop in a long line even under the gentle turn.

“Finding the correct angle quickly is paramount, but from here, all I need to do is push upward,” he explains softly, pressing the boy’s jaw just a little higher. “And the act is complete. No strength, simply movement.”

He holds him there a moment more, his own pulse quickening now to hear the way the boy whimpers beneath him, and then releases him in favor of tugging the hideous sweater roughly over Will's head.

“But that may be too clean for your particular tastes,” Hannibal considers, fingers working free the buttons of Will’s shirt. “You enjoy chaos. Blood spilled beneath your clever hands, running hot against your skin. The noise and struggle of slaughter, rendered into sudden silence but for the pounding of your heart.”

He pulls the boy’s shirt off his shoulders and snares him around the waist again to pull him fast against him, mouth hot against his shoulders, toned but narrow in their youth.

“Messy boy.”

"Yes," Will gasps, dropping his head to allow Hannibal’s lips higher, hot and welcome and utterly filthy, somehow, the way he kisses him.

Yes, he loves the carnage. He loves the tackiness, he loves feeling the warmth cool against him, the body actually not quick in growing cold, resisting death even in the most primal, final way.

Will moans and arches back against Hannibal. Brings a hand up to curl in his hair and grip.

"It's intimate," he whispers, rubbing against Hannibal’s cock, knowing his cheeks are red, his lips more so. Already utterly debauched.

Hannibal draws a deep breath, closes his eyes beneath the feel of Will's long fingers gathering in his hair to pull him nearer still. He turns him towards the bed with a jerk, a rough movement that would send the boy sprawling if not held tight in Hannibal's arms, and he folds over him until Will has to plant his hands against the mattress for support.

"You enjoy letting them struggle. Watching their weak and shuddering attempts to cling to life," he breathes low against the boy's neck, lifting a hand to press his fingers into the boy's mouth. A groan, soft, as Will sucks them deeply, eagerly, throat working to wet them. "Risky. They may fight back, then, if you miss your target."

He pulls his fingers away, watches Will chase them with his lips unfurled and flushed, watches the long thread of spit fall against his chin. Grasping him with his other hand by the back of his neck, he shoves him down further still, face against the mattress as his fingers enter roughly, dampened only with the boy's own saliva.

"You enjoy that the most. When they lash out and strike you in desperation. Tasting your own blood before you taste theirs."

Will groans, the words sinking deep into his skin, harsh as the fingers stretching him are, but pulling warmth up against him as well.

He's half dressed beneath the man who isn't at all undone, who feeds him true and filthy words and brings Will to incoherency with them. Perhaps it's the knowledge that he has found someone like himself to share this with, perhaps the innate understanding that he would die, by this man's hands or another's, anything but time's cold dead fingers.

"Their blood tastes sweeter," he whimpers, gripping the sheets hard, arching his back to bring his hips up, "for the panic. Their eyes grow wide."

He moans, a deep, pleased sound and feels Hannibal respond to it.

"So surprised," he breathes, "that the beautiful boy they'd tormented is willing and happy and capable of tormenting back - _aah."_

"You are striking," Hannibal acknowledges, humming amusement at the pun, before he leans back enough to watch his fingers work inside the boy. Buried to the knuckles, spreading and stretching roughly to see that skin yield before him as does Will with every gasp and whimper. He pushes up to his toes, hands spreading and curling against the bed, hips and spine twisting outside of his control.

Gloriously alive, an existence carved in fierce resistance to anything but, even as he steals the radiance of others to feed his own.

A worthy sacrifice, Hannibal muses, listening keenly as he moves to his knees, and brings his mouth alongside his fingers. A long swipe of tongue, a fierce suck against sensitive skin.

Will's fingers curl tighter in the sheets and he bites them hard between his teeth to avoid another curse, another reprimand for language and the potential loss of teeth.

_Fuck, fuck, fuck..._

It echoes in his heart beat, every rough lick against the hole still being stretched meticulously enough to border on cruel. His entire body is shaking, his legs as wide apart as he can have them with his pants still around his thighs.

He's too far from the mattress to effectively rut against it and he moans, the sound trembling, at that particular hindrance.

"Yes," the sound is hissed, drawn out, pleased, and Will stretches himself against the bed as he does back towards the hungry mouth against him.

He considers his own words in the car, considers what they had been in answer to, and another shudder passes through him, another strange sensation that speaks of things he should be terrified of, that remind him how close he stands to death and how he willingly bends over for him.

It's utterly thrilling.

The fingers part further, the tongue between, and Will ducks his head to nearly sob against the covers.

"Hannibal -"

He presses his tongue deeper, inside the boy now to feel him squirm and writhe and clench and loosen all in turn. Waves of movement crashing hot and fast against his mouth, spreading before him against the bed, and the sound of his name aching shaken from Will’s mouth earns him a pleased hum, vibrations singing through his skin.

And it stops, just as suddenly as it began, as Hannibal withdraws himself and steps away from the boy. He takes in the sight of him, spread and open, as he unbuttons his shirt languidly, each button receiving particular attention while Hannibal remembers the parts he was most looking forward to eating from this particular boy.

“Your liver, certainly,” Hannibal says. “You’ve not had time to do damage to it. Your lungs. Kidneys.”

A pause, considerate. “Your heart.”

He removes his shirt and moves to the closet, hanging it neatly.

“I will have them, still,” he continues, as he removes his socks and sets them aside. Hannibal looks back to the boy, bent across the mattress and watching him wide-eyed from beneath a tousle of hair. “When it suits me to do so.”

His pants are undone just as languorously, unhurried despite the intensity of his own arousal, pressing visible against his underwear. Silk, again. Of course.

Will’s eyes shift slowly from the bulge, outlined in almost laughably fine detail by the thin fabric, and up, to meet the dark eyes that watch him, study, see. He moans softly and stretches his arms further forward over the bed, arching his back like a cat before staying in that position, still, enticing.

“If you keep dousing me in wine, you may have to forgo my liver.” Will murmurs, voice a lazy, teasing arc, just barely slippery with the alcohol within him. He’s achingly hard between his legs, and unable to alleviate it without breaking a direct order from the man across the room.

“You seek intimacy as I do,” he muses, fingers spreading and folding against themselves, against the sheets, “You consume and you keep your victims within you - you worship them in the most holy way possible.”

He groans, rocks back in a gentle gesture, before sliding his hands down his thighs to push his pants off and away - a messy heap on the floor.

“Do you become them, for a time? Consuming their souls and lives as you do?” Will stretches upright, briefly, to arch his back the other way, before deliberately, almost obediently, bending over the bed again, head turned to watch Hannibal, smile coy.

Hannibal smiles, a brief but genuine amusement, at the boy’s attempts to fumble around in his mind even as his cock drips against the bed. The feline movements are not lost on him, presenting himself so willingly even as Hannibal considers how lovely he would be with his organs laid bare in the cavity of his chest, near-black scarlets and purples contrasting with skin even more pale than it is now.

A quiet sound, thoughtful. Pleased.

“Nothing so dramatic,” he answers, folding his pants and hanging them as well, before shedding the silk that clings to him. “Though I always feel an appreciation for what they yield to me in their sacrifice, it is the meaningless of their existence, before that moment, that entices me. I would never seek to emulate such things.”

He returns with slow steps, fingernails curling down the length of the boy’s spine to draw his bend deeper, and in an easy, startlingly fast movement, turns him to his back and hoists him. One hand beneath his ass, the other splayed across his back, wetting his lips in a flicker of tongue as the boy wraps his legs around Hannibal’s waist, held easily against him.

Will clings to him, one hand curled up under his arm to grip his shoulder, the other wrapped around Hannibal’s middle. The way he’s held, he’s just barely higher than Hannibal, can leave his eyes hooded to look down and see him. He swallows gently, lips parted on heavy breaths.

“You should believe in the meaninglessness of your own existence.” he murmurs, but there’s no heat there, no accusation, merely a suggestion from someone who has had this pointed out to him before. Then he leans closer, takes the man’s lips with his own in a kiss that is partially claiming, partially just the need to feel his arms tighten around him where they hold Will up.

He’s held so effortlessly that it makes Will’s heart hammer harder. He knows Hannibal can feel it.

He bites the corner of his lip, when he pulls back, bends it out of shape in a strange sort of smile, and rolls his hips up against Hannibal’s stomach.

Hannibal turns over the boy’s words a few times and finds that the thoughtfulness of the statement resonates in him in an enjoyable way. He makes a considering noise as he lets himself be kissed, and another - deeper, rumbling low - as the boy presses hard and slick against his stomach, rutting slow against him.

“Do not let go.”

He turns and the wall hits hard against Will’s back as he’s driven into it, a loud thud disrupts the quiet words and little noises between them. Pinning him against it so tight he can feel the boy gasping to breathe for a moment as Hannibal lines himself up against Will’s opening, fingernails curling sharp against his hip where his arm is wrapped around.

The entry is rough, hot friction even with the preparation that Hannibal afforded him, and he pushes in with a single, long press of hips, delighting at the frantic squirm that jerks through the boy’s body.

Will’s nails turn sharp against Hannibal’s back and he twists, lips back in a hiss of genuine pain before they part, slack, on a needy moan as Hannibal keeps pushing.

He has had no one since the last time he’d seen this man, his bruises and cuts too prominent to not draw attention from a trick, to not have one who considered him particularly pretty to show concern and call someone. Will had forced himself from bed on the eighth day to go to a lecture because he was crawling from his skin with boredom and his mind seemed unable to process anything but sharp cheekbones, dark merciless eyes.

Hannibal presses closer, pushing the air from Will’s lungs and pressing his teeth to Will’s shoulder, hard enough, he knows, to mark. In retaliation, Will’s nails leave marks of their own. He squeezes his muscles, arches his back and gasps, delighted by the fullness, the throb of need within him where they join.

“Fuck, fuck,” too far gone with the strange simmering of pleasure and pain to remember to hold his tongue.

He sees light bright behind his eyes, hears the sound of skin cracking against skin, before he registers that he’s been slapped hard enough to knock him dizzy. Hard enough to bruise, from the imprint of the back of Hannibal’s hand across his mouth.

It’s followed by a rough kiss, tasting the bloom of blood where his lip split against his teeth, tongue dragging across it to taste him, his whimper, the breath that Hannibal drives from him as he draws himself back and presses back in again.

No need for an explanation this time - he knows what he’s done, been warned enough times that it doesn’t bear repeating. Only punishment, tempered from what Hannibal had threatened him with in retaliation for his disobedience, but enough to make clear his displeasure.

Will’s fingers dig sharper into his back for it and Hannibal nearly growls at the sensation, an abrupt thrust of hips to rip free another cry of pain, of animal lust, of blood and sweat and sex that fills Hannibal’s nostrils and brings his heart to shuddering faster now in turn. The boy’s cock leaks slick between them, from the pressure of Hannibal inside him, from the painfully long time he’s been left hard.

“Touch yourself,” Hannibal breathes. “Do not finish until I tell you.”

Will swallows, a sound escaping him after that borders on both pain and need and he doesn’t linger on it, can’t. He feels the iron of his blood slip down his throat and swallows again, the feeling instinctively uncomfortable.

He arches back, head against the wall and eyes closed as he slips one hand between them to stroke himself, a series of soft keens and whimpered pleas past his lips before he can think to stop them. He’s too close to keep this up long, but his hand doesn’t still. For a few agonizing moments he refuses to beg for release, he takes every thrust against him, bends his body with soft shudders and careful turns to feel more and tighter and harder.

“Please!” it’s drawn from him like a hook from skin, pained and sharp and in a voice too low to constitute anything but utter need.

“Please, Hannibal, please…”

Hearing his name sobbed, begging sweetly past the boy’s swelling lip is a symphony, a rising crescendo of strings soaring higher with each subsequent plea that fills Hannibal’s chest with a welcome tension, pulling at the strings that make him work, plucked by Will’s begging and the knowledge that he will continue to struggle against himself simply to please Hannibal.

He does not answer him, but instead wraps his arm tighter around the boy’s middle and forces a hand against his throat, to pin him, to feel the way his words and gasps work their way free beneath his grip. Not choking, but a smothering pressure.

Will’s lips part once in silence as his breath hitches and Hannibal’s release nearly staggers him, fingers snapping tighter as it pulls fiercely through him, burying himself inside Will and spilling heat between them. He kisses him, a sloppy, possessive thing, moves to his cheek and bites where he struck him, just enough for him to feel it, letting the boy’s shudders milk every pulse of pleasure from him.

And only when his breath, shaking, is gathered back to him does Hannibal mutter, “Now.”

It’s all Will needs, just one word, once, and his entire body goes rigid in pleasure, neck stretched and vulnerable, throat trembling on swallows and gasps. It seems over almost too quickly and Will blinks his eyes open with a smile, a grin, a low laugh that draws his heart faster, one hand up to press against his face and smear the blood from his lip down his chin.

He tries to catch his breath with quick, harsh pants, and moves to duck his head beneath Hannibal’s chin in an oddly childish gesture, need for comfort.

He shows no outward sign of distress, not from the harsh treatment, from the slap that still rang in his ears and slid down his chin in crimson reminder. Will is utterly content, squirming in Hannibal’s arms and pulling against him to kiss him again, one of his hands splayed over Hannibal’s throat in brief reminder of how the other had held him.

He knows that will leave bruises too.

Hannibal shifts enough to withdraw from the boy but does not yet release him, and for the moment to allows himself to be gently throttled and kissed. He draws the tip of his tongue from Will’s chin to his mouth, following the line of blood, and hums as the boy nuzzles back beneath his chin again.

A peculiar contentment, a more profound satisfaction than Hannibal can remember experiencing in some time.

He carries him towards the bed, does not drop him there yet and instead observes the amusement that appears in the corners of Will’s eyes, in the lingering flush of his cheeks.

“You will stay tonight,” Hannibal decides, taking in the bruises and the cuts, feeling a swell of pleasure at how much they add to the boy’s existing beauty. “Tomorrow you will work, and you will call me when you’ve done so. I wish to see you at your studies.”

Will grins, says nothing as he’s finally set down, but makes an effort, at least, to not mess the sheets too much with what’s dripping down his thigh. He’s allowed the shower, unhindered, and relishes the hot water, the way it eases the tension from his muscles. He brings up a hand to touch his lip, hissing at how sensitive it is as his fingers prod it.

“Fuck,” just a word, one word, breathed into the white noise around him, and it sends a shiver of anticipation up his spine with the knowledge that he will be reprimanded for it time and again if he uses it in the man’s presence.

He sucks it into his mouth and tastes the last residual metallic drops, before turning off the water and taking up one of the thick, white towels.

Hannibal is reading in bed by the time Will returns, and pays him absolutely no mind when Will climbs in beside him - obviously allowed. Will arches, stretches with a moan that rivals those he made in pleasure at Hannibal’s hands, and then settles, curled up against one of the large over-stuffed pillows.

It doesn’t take him long to fall asleep, and he doesn’t wake till morning, pressed close against Hannibal’s chest, matching the man’s breathing.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Tell me, Will,” Hannibal mutters, words tight even as they pass his lips. “Did you cry?”_
> 
> _Will keens, a soft, helpless little noise and his lips spread into a smile. He blinks, eyes up to watch Hannibal’s, to read the hunger in them, honed in on that one idea, that single notion that Will could cry._
> 
> _“No,” he breathes._
> 
> WARNINGS FOR THIS CHAPTER SPECIFICALLY: physical abuse, heavy dub-con, mentions of bloodplay

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We seem to be posting daily so... here y'are.

“Hi,” Will’s voice hums, pleased, through the receiver. He brings a hand up to splay over his face as he waits for Hannibal to respond, fingers cool against the heat of it, against the blood still drying there.

A pause, absorbing the sleepy satisfaction in his voice, before Hannibal responds evenly. “Hello, Will. How was your lesson?”

Detachment, distraction in his voice - somewhere public, perhaps, when the call comes, as inscrutable over the phone as he is face-to-face. In truth, he stands in his kitchen, sharpening knives for cooking and tools for butchering as equals, each laid neatly beside the other for use in what he anticipates Will has procured.

A surprising sensation, this strange faith in the boy’s capabilities, although no doubt influenced by Will’s own overwhelming confidence in himself. Hannibal grows pensive in thought, and tamps it all down beneath the same invariable tone. “Are you ready for me to pick you up?”

Will glances to the floor, cheap carpet in an apartment Will would never enter without utter necessity. He idles a switchblade between his fingers, lazy practiced movements that appear much faster than they are.

"Please,” he says, smiling at how oddly domestic it sounds, like a father picking up his son from school, from a play date. Will smiles wider, nudges the body on the floor with his toes.

"Doctor Lecter," he adds in a purr.

He'd had to seek out Hannibal’s number that morning - the man did not believe in easy solutions - and still relished knowing that little bit more about him.

He tells Hannibal the address by guess, peeling back the drapes with the point of the knife for the street name. The house he describes - he doesn't know the number.

A dingy building, maintained only marginally by whatever absentee landlord owns it, in a neighborhood that seeks to distance itself from the poorer areas it backs up against. Hannibal studies it at length and smooths a hand down the front of his coat, carrying with him an antique medical bag restored with new clasps and treated leather and a waterproof interior. It pleases him, the weight of it, the bloody history it must have seen with whomever carried it a century earlier.

His mind still lingers on thoughts of fevers and disease as he presses the buzzer with the sleeve of his coat. It hums in response, and he opens the door with his shoulder rather than touching it.

A walk-up, of course, no elevator to make his task any easier, and he raps twice softly against the door when he arrives.

Will opens it with a smile, fitting Hannibal’s warm predictions from the night before: pale skin marred in slowly drying blood. He flips the blade again, closed, and tosses it to the side table in the corridor before deliberately taking Hannibal’s tie - with a dirty hand - and pulling him into the apartment.

Inside there is nothing extraordinary, a long corridor leading to a wan looking living room, a bedroom to the side. Another door, partially open, directly opposite leads to what could most likely be the bathroom.

Beyond the smear of blood against the wall, nothing seems at all out of place.

Will kisses Hannibal open-mouthed and eager, knowing full well he will be reprimanded for the damage done his tie, and hums.

He catches the boy’s wrist as though to pull it away but already he knows that blood has soaked deep into the expensive silk, spread through its fibers the way he feels Will spread through him beneath the kiss. A faint sound of dismay before he leans into him, mouth moving harshly against his, claiming and rough and eager to taste the boy’s tongue against his own, to taste the blood still metallic in his mouth.

He pushes the door closed behind him with his foot and grasps Will’s face in his hand, shoving him gently back enough that he can lock the door, again using his sleeve.

“Messy boy,” Hannibal scolds him softly, taking in the sight of him, the flush of color along the rises of his skin, the stripes of crimson drying to brown against his skin. A trickle draws his attention, a small cut along the boy’s thigh, and a few others near it.

A lingering pause, watching the red bead skim through the pale hair of his thigh.

“You’ve been cut.” An observation, forced to be one in an effort to reduce the pressure Hannibal suddenly feels behind his eyes. His fingers stretch and close again, a movement scarcely discernable compared to the possessiveness that Hannibal feels drawing up sharp inside of him.

Will shrugs, a cat-like, graceful gesture, and draws a thumb over the deepest cut to catch the blood against it.

“He had a particular taste in pain,” he offers, bringing the thumb to his lips and sucking it clean. He watches Hannibal’s eyes follow the motion, a strange movement within them that has nothing to do with the physical, nothing to do with the light. It sends a shiver through Will he can’t explain.

“I just returned the favor,” he adds, the only suggestion to what he’s done.

He kisses Hannibal again, another lingering messy thing and pulls away to make his way back to the bedroom.

Within, the bed has seen the worst of it. Sheets tangled and bloody. Some has slipped to the carpet, a small stain at a glance. There is no sign of the body, and Hannibal has to step around the bed to see it. Sprawled, splayed, the man was more than a little overweight. The stain beneath him is far from small.

Will directs a painfully innocent look at Hannibal from beneath his hair.

The second time, in so few minutes, that Hannibal hums a note of mild dismay.

“Are you always so undisciplined as this?” Disapproval in his voice. “It’s a wonder you haven’t been found out yet.”

Despite the tone, Hannibal reaches out to stroke his fingers through the boy’s curls, grasping them gently, almost affectionate if not for the particular tension in his mouth. His mind sets to work before his body, taking in every pool and splatter and drip of blood in rapid succession, following the movement of the murder as it took place, to where the man now settles into the floor, that much heavier in death than when he was on top of Will.

For a moment, Hannibal’s not sure which thought displeases him more - the idea of such a distasteful person rutting away at Will, or that Will chose to do this in an apartment with carpeting.

His fingers tighten and he pulls the boy towards him again, another lingering kiss before he releases him and sets down his bag to unshoulder his coat.

“I would ask how you’ve dealt with such things in the past, but I know the answer is that you haven’t bothered.”

“I’ve never bothered to stick around after,” Will answers honestly, shrugging. The best thing about his history is that he can’t be tracked to this. He is known by his face, but so many boys are. So many have soft cherubic features, curly hair, blue eyes filled with the wisdom of the world in one far too young.

The usual bullshit.

“Men like this… they bring enough boys home for the DNA to not matter.” Will’s brows rise, for a moment, considering. “Chances are most of the boys who had catalogued the water stains on his ceiling are no longer alive.”

Will glances over, flashes his white teeth. “Thanks to you.”

“If it saved them from being trapped underneath him, then it’s a far better fate.”

Will’s words linger, though, gnaw and pull somewhere in Hannibal’s chest, beneath his ribs. He feels the images more than sees them, the boy on his back arching and moaning even in falsity as sweat and grunts fell against his skin. Curving against this other man and whispering praise against his ear, hands skimming the fat of his back as blood smeared across his spread thighs.

Hannibal allows the jealous thoughts to come to fruition, and when they have done so, plucks them to store away for later, when they can be properly savored.

In truth, the boy isn’t entirely wrong. It would do more harm to disturb the scene overly much than to leave it all in situ. Surely the man’s been brought in before for solicitation, at the very least, a record on file, and such murders are not uncommon, especially in an area such as this. In a smaller town, or a more important neighborhood, it may merit more investigation, but this would be cursory at best and unlikely to earn a detailed search for trace evidence.

Trace evidence likely destroyed by the bloodbath laid before them, at any rate.

Still, Hannibal muses as he glances back to the boy all wide-eyed and prideful, there are few opportunities that resist a chance for learning.

He draws from his bag latex gloves and hands them to Will. A soft microfiber cloth afterward.

“You will remove your fingerprints from anything you’ve touched.” A pause, and he reiterates when he hears Will draw a breath to protest. “Anything.”

Will’s brows draw and he gives Hannibal a very pointed look before stepping back and gesturing to himself.

“One loses track of where one was thrown, Hannibal, in a fit of passion,” he mutters, sarcasm rimming his tone. But he turns to obey at the look he receives.

In truth, the night hadn’t been a particularly eventful one. He’s not been with the man before, but he’d heard enough. Someone without an ounce of charm desperate for power. He didn’t just bleed the kids for fun, he’d choke them, beat them… Will had gotten lucky, he supposes, as lucky as one could, that he happened to be in a slicing mood today.

They had gone from the corridor to the bedroom without a detour. He doubts Hannibal missed the trail of clothes up the hall - all his, unfortunately - meaning his back had made very clear acquaintance with the wall on his way.

At least, he muses, trailing the cloth over the wall, his clothes are all clean.

Hannibal steps out of the bedroom to watch the boy with a practiced disinterest, in truth ensconced in the sight of him. The bored amusement in his eyes, the negligent attention to actually removing any prints that were probably not left to begin with, the long limbs and hairless chest still striped in flaking smears where he wiped his hands across himself.

“Harder,” comes the low instruction, breaking the silence between them. “You will need to scrub harder. Go back over what you’ve just done.”

The huff of breath is exquisite and Hannibal finds that he can scarcely maintain his expression of indifference for the sudden coil of pleasure it twists in him.

“One must have lost track,” he muses softly, “reliving the enjoyment of the evening.”

Will’s eyes narrow, his jaw sets in an expression of clear displeasure. He holds the man’s eyes long enough to feel his own cheeks darken before he blinks and his expression clears entirely. He returns to stand near Hannibal, by the door where he had started the unnecessary exercise.

He draws his hand over the wall harder, eyes on his work, before he takes a step back, just enough to place one foot behind the other, and bends. A deliberate, arched curve as he continues following the instructions. Another step and Will sinks to his knees, pressing a palm to the floor as he leans close to draw the cloth over a part of the wall he is certain he never touched.

He rocks his hips back, bends lower, cleans the dust off the wall that borders the carpet there, before sitting back on his heels, eyes up, wide, clear.

“I will do my utmost to remember.”

An almost unnatural smoothness in the turn of Hannibal’s as he follows the boy’s display with interest, and his head tilts to a particular angle as he looks down at the boy kneeling by his feet.

Predatorial.

“The knife,” Hannibal suggests, a jarring lightness to his tone as he glances towards the bloodsoaked tangle of sheets on the bed. “Considering your overall negligence, I imagine it’s covered in your traces.”

He’s unable to look away as the boy rises in a smooth motion, drawing nearer up the length of Hannibal’s leg as he unfurls from the ground. It’s a sinuous movement, elegant even, and Hannibal draws a deeper breath as the boy’s narrowed eyes meet his.

“You should consider yourself lucky I’ve not asked you to help me move him,” Hannibal informs him quietly. “Though there is still time to do so if you’d care to feel his skin against your own again. Or we could simply take that with us. A memento of your time together.”

Will’s eyes narrow with a trace of disgust but he says nothing. He takes a step back, then another, and moves to the end of the corridor to gather up the knife he’d dropped to the table there. He brings it back, the handle and blade both covered in blood, though it’s impossible to say how much belongs to whom.

He weighs it on his palm, flicks it open and turns it, eyes slowly moving up to meet Hannibal’s again as his hand continues to manipulate the blade.

“I would rather keep the blade,” he says honestly, flips it shut, and passes it - handle first - to Hannibal. For the moment, obedient again. He swallows.

“Are we going to move him?”

Hannibal lifts a hand in decline of the blade, but does not argue against him keeping it. Appreciates his deference in offering, as well as the quick, practiced movement of his hand with it.

A thoughtful noise. Perhaps he’ll teach him to cook, as well.

“No,” Hannibal finally answers. He reaches to rest his fingers beneath the boy’s chin and tilt him upwards to meet his lips, pleased by the obedience.

“Gather your things. There are towels in the bag. You may moisten one to wash your face. As much as the look suits you, it may draw unwanted attention should anyone pull up beside us.”

He shrugs into his coat, glancing towards the kitchen where Will goes to wet the towel, and notes the linoleum floor. An image of Will sprawled there, beneath him instead of someone else, sliding slick against pools of scarlet.

“Next time, perhaps consider the kitchen rather than the bedroom,” Hannibal suggests, amused. “The blood will linger much longer for you to play in, if you insist on doing so.”

Will’s lips twitch in the start of another smile and he doesn’t meet Hannibal’s eyes as he wipes the blood from his face, revealing the blush that had started warming there from Hannibal’s words. He had reveled in the blood of the man he’d killed, he’d reveled in his stuttered gasps and clumsy attempts to get Will to stop.

He’d kissed him, since the man had seemed to love Will’s mouth so much. He wonders if that was mercy or a different brand of sadism.

He takes his time to clean the back of his neck, down his chest, lingering where he knows he has no need to, simply to leave a damp trail to dry against his skin, for Hannibal to see.

He doesn’t wash below his waist, beyond mopping up the blood from the cuts there, he leaves that for the hot shower of Hannibal’s home - where he’s certain they’re going - and instead starts on the blade, meticulous in cleaning it, careful not to cut the latex as he rubs the blood from it under the stream of the tap.

He finishes, dries it on the towel he’d draped over his shoulder, and walks past Hannibal to gather his clothes. The towel, predictably, goes on the floor, with the gloves, and Will deliberately sets the knife between his teeth with a grin before slipping into his jeans. Hannibal notes he has no boxers beneath. After, Will just pockets the blade, doesn’t spend a long time retrieving and donning his clothes.

Once he’s yanked his boots on - leaving them unlaced and himself looking casually undone - he faces Hannibal again, smile reaching his eyes as he cocks his head, lifts his chin. He slips his hands into his pockets, pushes his jeans lower with the motion, enough to show just the bare scruff of hair he has there, between his navel and his cock.

He’s in the sweater Hannibal hates, again.

“Shall we?” he asks.

A parting of lips, pensive, attention lingering on the bare skin above the boy’s pants for a moment longer than Hannibal would like.

He buttons his coat, leaving his bag on the floor, and straightens with a quick movement of his hands against the expensive material checked in dark greys against black to smooth it flat. He drags the back of his fingers down the boy’s chest, feels the way his ribs spread to draw a deeper breath beneath his touch, and travels it back upwards to run against his neck and into his hair.

A quick twist and he forces the boy to double over, above the towel and gloves left carelessly on the floor.

“Pick them up.”

Will hisses, one hand out for balance, the other snared in his pocket still. It takes a moment for him to realize where his reflexes had taken him. He lets go of the knife.

He waits to be given the free range of movement to do so and finds it not allowed, instead he's stuck humiliatingly trying to grab for both with Hannibal's hand in his hair as though he's holding a dog by the scruff.

He manages, balls up both and holds them against his stomach before glaring up at Hannibal. 

The hand doesn't leave his hair, it twists.

Will bares his teeth but makes no other sound, instead, he takes up the gloves to shove into his pockets, and shakes out the towel with a flourish before neatly folding it,

This time when he glares, he's released.

Hannibal presses a hand against the boy’s cheek, thumb stroking lightly beneath his eye. An affectionate gesture - fond, even - despite the look he’s being given. Perhaps because of it. And he allows a faint smile.

“Now, we shall.”

\---

The boy still stinks of someone else when they enter the house. It trails after him as he passes by, and Hannibal hangs his coat. Blood at the forefront acrid and metallic, fresh where the boy’s jeans have rubbed against his thigh. Beneath it his own sweat and the sweat of the man who took his pleasure from Will. Hannibal envisions him dripping, sliding against him, and feels revulsion - a rare enough thing - tighten his stomach. And still the smell of semen, coating warm skin.

“Shower.” A pause, and a mild declaration, perhaps joking, perhaps not. “I am going to burn those clothes.”

Will regards him, raises an eyebrow, before his lips tilt up in a smile, head cocked just so.

"But that would be rude," he purrs, smile widening as Hannibal’s expression remains unchanged. He steps closer and tugs his sweater over his head, keeps it in his hand a moment, not tossing it to the floor yet.

"What would you rather I wear, hmm?" His voice is soft, teasing, pleasantly low. One hand comes up to work the buttons on his shirt as he toes his boots off and steps out of them.

"Bruises you've bitten into me?" He licks his lip. "Imprints of your hand on my ass?"

The laugh is low, still, pleased, and he shrugs out of his shirt enough to leave it hanging just on his arms.

"Possessive much?" 

Snaring the boy by the arm to stop his ceaseless undulations, to enjoy the power in being able to stop them rather than any lack of desire to watch the movements, Hannibal pulls him close. He lifts his other hand to stroke the side of Will’s face, rough hand sliding up into his hair again to feel the curls soft against his fingers. To stir the scent of Will's evening and feel the animal pull it draws in him.

"Extremely," Hannibal murmurs against the boy's temple, mouth pressed to his skin, drawing the lithe body against his own. "Of things that are mine."

He skims his free hand up the warmth of the boy's back, beneath his loosened shirt and Will bends to it, arches under the touch.

"It is only gracious to let others borrow what one owns," he continues thoughtfully, "but I expect them to be returned to me in the same way that they were lent."

Considerate words, carefully chosen, to betray only the barest hint of how badly Hannibal wants nothing more than to fuck Will until he smells of him again.

Will hums, allows his eyes to close just briefly, when Hannibal can’t see the response, and bites his lip. Softly, he swallows, feels the arm around him tighten. There is a disturbing comfort in being held by a monster. Like begets like.

When Hannibal steps back, Will shucks his shirt properly, balls it up in his hands as he had the sweater. He pulls the knife from his pocket to toss it into one of his boots that he shoves with his foot to rest by the chest at the end of the bed.

“May I keep my boots?” he asks, the smile on his face soft but his eyes serious.

Hannibal feigns a longer consideration than he actually affords the question, removing his cufflinks and watching the boy from beneath the hair that’s fallen loose, untidy from where it was artfully arranged before.

“You may,” he agrees. “I imagine it will be quite charming set against the suits you’ll be wearing. To attract a different quality of clientele, although I imagine you will still feel the pull towards,” Hannibal pauses, glancing towards the heap of clothing in the boy’s hand, “that, now and again.”

Will’s eyes narrow as his smile widens, a very displeased look but one he hides behind only a thin veil of aggravation.

“Much obliged,” is all he says, shifting the shirt and sweater to hang over his wrist as he brings his hands together to undo the button and fly on his jeans. Then he just stops, leaves his thumbs hooked in the belt loops, drawing the jeans just low enough to suggest, and not enough to properly show.

“I choose my demographic carefully,” he says softly. “Men like him,” he unnecessarily gestures into midair, “are not missed. They’re the sick f-... sick kinds of people who police crawl all over trying to nail on something. No one cares when they die, people rejoice.”

He smiles a little more.

“Once in a while I need to whet my palette with something more refined. Like you.” He drags his bottom lip between his teeth and grins.

“People would miss you.” His tone dips.

“So you are rare, for me. You are a delicacy to take time with and enjoy.”

Will swallows. Steps closer. His jeans slip a little as he does, still not enough.

“What do you think a suit would do for me, hmm? How will the scum of the earth see me and treat me in one?” he grins, eyes down. “And how will your ilk?”

He laughs softly, brings one wrist up against his lip and pulls it away, an absent gesture.

“You will kill me, Hannibal.”

Hannibal watches him, his own gestures stilled and head canted at a particular angle. Listening, attentively. Hearing Will as he speaks.

A note of threat, a single plucked chord of tension between them, and Hannibal draws a soft breath.

“I will,” he answers, amicably, and catches the boy’s wrist in his hand. A gentle tug now, to close the distance between them, and he presses his mouth where Will’s touched just a moment before. “But not today. Not so long as you continue to interest me.”

He pulls Will against him, drapes the boy’s arm over his shoulder and slips his thumbs beneath the waistband of his jeans. Hannibal doesn’t push yet, resists the urge in favor of feeling a shiver course through Will instead.

“It would please me to see you in such, as much as it would please me to see you wearing nothing but the marks I leave on your skin. I offer only suggestions of what may maintain my interest, and they are yours to discard as you deem wise.”

One hand slips free of the boy’s jeans, slides suddenly low, between his legs to press his palm against the cuts on the boy’s thigh, grinding rough denim against them.

“But do not pretend that you do not share the same designs that I do for how this will end, when the time comes.”

Will’s lips draw back in a brief expression of pain and he blinks, folds his fingers against Hannibal's back.

"I entertain many scenarios," he agrees, ducking his head before gently nuzzling against the older man. His free hand moves to Hannibal’s wrist, tugs it aside, up, to rest over his cock, half hard again from their words alone.

"What a pair we make." His voice clicks on the consonant, eyes up before his smile widens and he splays his hand against Hannibal's head to draw him down to kiss again, hips rolling to feel the man’s palm harder against him.

"He fucked me on my knees," he murmurs, lips against Hannibal's, smiling and holding him close to keep their breath between them. “Spread my legs wide, cut another line every time I whimpered."

Will bites his lip, feels Hannibal’s breath draw slowly in as he exhales.

"He told me he wanted to see me cry,” he moans quietly. "Told me to beg for more and take it like a good boy."

The scene itself plays obscene in Will’s head, not at all appealing, easy enough to fake. But with Hannibal so close he imagines enacting it with him. Imagines that accented voice purring filth into his ear.

Will moans again and bites Hannibal’s bottom lip before kissing him again, harsh and hot.

Hannibal finds the sensation stored away from earlier, when Will arched and sighed and preened bare and elegant and streaked in gore before him. The smell of sex encrusted to his thighs and radiating from him in warmth that Hannibal now steals beneath harsh fingers, tugging the boy’s cock free from his jeans and shoving them down further on his hips in one fluid moment.

He finds the sensation, that vining, strangulating jealousy, and he ravages it for all it has to offer, growling low against the boy’s mouth as his hand squeezes almost cruelly against his cock. Not stroking, not moving against it, just holding it as though to make it his.

“Tell me, Will,” Hannibal mutters, words tight even as they pass his lips. “Did you cry?”

Will keens, a soft, helpless little noise and his lips spread into a smile. He blinks, eyes up to watch Hannibal’s, to read the hunger in them, honed in on that one idea, that single notion that Will could cry.

“No,” he breathes.

A pleased sound, so many delights in the admission that Will denied a man about to die his desires, that although he bowed and bent he was ferocious, and that for all of that stubbornness and pride, he is capable of tears.

His pants are shoved down to his thighs, further still until the boy steps out of them, Hannibal’s hand still wrapped hard around his cock. He squeezes it, a rough, long upward stroke, and sighs against the boy’s mouth as he whimpers.

“You will. For me alone.”

No idle threat here, no wishful declaration of someone who overestimates their own worth and meaning by inflicting empty demands on someone they paid to hear them. No little switchblade cuts and meager dripping of blood against thighs that have been coated in much worse.

Hannibal undoes the fly of his pants, shucking them down past his hips and ignoring the rest of it, mindless of stains or evidence or anything but driving himself inside this boy until he’s begging his name, choked with tears. Until there’s no trace left of anyone but Hannibal drawn into his skin.

Will’s shoulders are snared and in a smooth curving movement the boy is brought to the floor.

Will’s instinct is to crawl back, to get out from under the man as he settles over him, and he finds his heart hammering in disgusting anticipation for what’s to come.

“No,” he laughs, and it’s pleased, for the moment, a challenge set and a challenge met, but the panic rises quick, with Hannibal as fast as he is, with how strong he is, with the promise in those cold eyes as Will’s struggling gets him nowhere.

“Shit.”

It’s reflexive, and Will brings both hands up to shield his face from the strike that comes, and loses both his balance and his grip on the floor that would have earned him a few more inches of safety at least. He makes a sound of pain and drops his hands as soon as he feels it safe, turning to his stomach to crawl away, knowing he would be more effective kicking than he would clawing.

He thinks of the first night this had happened, how he had fought, for the first time in his life, to live, not just to get the advantage.

Hannibal laughs. Just a breath, a sound of absolute endearment and delight as he watches the struggle - a sound that here and now sends cold terror through the boy.

Hard hands grasp Will by his ankles as he tries to crawl away, and Hannibal jerks him back sharply enough that it leaves scalding rugburns across his hips, his stomach. Another quick scurry in the instant that Hannibal readjusts, leaning over the boy to press a hand against the back of his neck, face turned against the carpet. Hannibal watches him gasp, sees his exquisite mouth gaping wide in surprise, and he touches a kiss to his temple.

A gentle touch, barely enough to be felt.

“You will take what I give you,” Hannibal reminds him, and spreads his knees against the floor to split the boy’s legs wider.

Will makes a sound like a trapped animal and thrashes, hands coming up to push hard against the carpet to dislodge the hand against his neck. He brings one back and digs his nails between the bones in the wrist, claws there as hard as he can as the rest of his body fights to not be lifted and bent.

“No.” A growl this time, between his teeth and raw, and Will’s entire body comes alive with movement, with a desperate struggle to not be pinned, to avoid Hannibal’s pleased promise. He won’t give him that, his will to have his tears.

Hannibal is stronger than him, with no effort, it seems, and it infuriates Will more than the position he’s in, more than the stupid desire to just give in. He digs his nails in harder against the arm above him and gasps a breath when his legs, inevitably, are spread for him, wide, enough to take away some of the leverage he had before to push away.

“Fuck you.” It’s desperate, angry, and Will grits his teeth, trying to turn his head away.

A growl, sharp, as the boy’s fingers tear skin enough to leave it raw. Hannibal rips the boy’s hand free of his wrist and slides his hand from the back of his neck to the front of his throat. He turns him, narrowly dodging a quick kick aimed at his face, and braces his knees on top of Will’s thighs, digging bruises and reopening the newly healing cuts laid into his pale skin.

A hard slap, open-palmed across the boy’s face. Once for the first curse that he couldn’t catch him for, and again, a backhand more brutal than the first for the second curse. 

Hannibal lifts his chin in a dominant animal pleasure as the boy’s gasps choke in short bursts from his throat, and Will is stunned, face nearly numb with the strikes. He twists to aim another punch against Hannibal's stomach, his chest, anything. 

It's futile, he knows it well enough but Will refuses to stop, he can't stop his writhing and twisting to get away. 

"You want to be in the same fucking category as that pervert?" Will's voice is loud, enough to carry downstairs, though no one else will hear.

"You do this you are no fucking better! Hannibal -"

Everything stills. The lust, the violence, the brutality, the cruel joy beneath it all.

It stills suddenly and sharply enough that Will stills with it for a heartbeat, a sudden pitching fear in his stomach and the moment is enough for Hannibal's hand to find his throat.

It presses, only gently, but each heartbeat brings it tighter, each pulse of blood beneath it draws a twitch clenching firm against soft skin. Hannibal's eyes are lightless dark and unnatural movements - preternatural - travel fast over Will's face to take in the expanse of his dawning terror.

"Am I not?" Hannibal finally intones with something like disappointment - a question that Will, choking, cannot answer. The older man hums a thoughtful noise, considers the words, and accepts them.

No warmth. No humor.

Cold. Black. The ocean at night time, beneath a new moon.

"Then this will be very easy for you. And our lessons are at an untimely end."

Disinterested now, in the exchange with this boy, a rote mechanism taking control of Hannibal that’s even more fearful than the explosive laughter and violence that carried his heart singing. Thoughtless, something he’s done enough times to complete it effortlessly, without any but the basest involvement.

He holds his hand hard enough to feel Will’s pulse thudding fast beneath it.

Will chokes, can't do more than arch his back in futile little bends. He's pinned entirely, mercilessly, and he wonders, for a brief, ridiculous moment of introspection, if he really looks so dead to the world when he kills too.

His throat clicks, dry and bruised, and Will’s hips still.

Then his hands.

Desperate little chokes for air before even those stop.

The hand against his throat eases but doesn’t move away, feeling for a pulse to make sure that there is one. Perhaps mild disappointment at the fact that the boy’s lost consciousness. A brief, gentle caress just under Will’s chin, with the thumb that had seconds before stopped the blood running to his brain.

A moment more, and Will moves, arm swinging to punch blind but hitting just under Hannibal’s jaw, hard enough to shock but not dislodge, but it gives him the moment, brief as it is, to shove the hand from his throat and shove himself back.

Surprise, genuine, as the boy lashes out so suddenly in his regained consciousness. The relentless survival instinct that surges back as suddenly as it vanished, foolish and desperate and somehow, for all of that, admirable.

It's easy enough to snare him by the ankle and drag him back in despite it.

A few more fists, increasingly unsteady in their aim, and Hannibal snares each in turn, squeezes them in his hand and pins them above the boy's head. Safer, this way to ensure he doesn't lose consciousness again, which would be a far too ready way to avoid this particular lesson.

Knees set inside his thighs, dried with blood from reopened cuts, and Hannibal gives him the courtesy of spit, stroked quickly along his cock, before he enters in one rough push, stretching harshly despite the boy's activities a few hours before. Will draws upwards in a breathless gasp and Hannibal inhales slowly, to feel the boy finally break and bend beneath him.

It’s sharp, a sting and tug that will leave Will sore the next day, perhaps for a few more, but that’s not what hurts him. Physical pain, Will can withstand, he has had to, has chosen to, it’s a skill and practice but this… Hannibal’s eyes looking through him, around him, seeing the negative space near Will as something more significant, that presses his eyes closed, turns his head away.

_Uninteresting._

Will swallows, a noise in his throat making its way up against his lips. He curls them, presses them together till they pale, makes the noise again.

_Hannibal had found him so interesting._

The next sound is a sob, unmistakable, and Will’s eyes remain clenched closed as his legs are pushed aside wider, his hips lifted to be fucked harder.

Just a thing, a hole, a void.

Just a fucking number.

Will’s hands clench into fists and he parts his lips on a choked gasp, blinking his eyes open and finding his vision hazy, liquid.

“Don’t,” he swallows. “Don’t -”

_I’m more than this, I’m better, I can do better…_

The shuddering sighs, the wet choking sounds, faint and weak, cut short and stuttering now quickens Hannibal's pulse, raises his heart rate above where it had settled still and languid in his chest. A sensation like heat returning, tingling sharp in his limbs, and Hannibal releases the boy's wrists.

Knowing there's no fight left in him.

Knowing he'll not struggle to escape.

He grasps his hips, instead, to raise them at a better angle for him to sit back on his knees and watch Will Graham sob into his carpet.

As he knew he would.

Hannibal rests the boy's ass against his thighs, and spares a hand to grasp his cock, limp now from the fight, from the abuse, from the slaps raising pale shadowy bruises across his cheeks. Only the second time he's touched it, Hannibal considers, and he tugs in time with his thrusts, shuddering as another rough sob wracks the boy before him.

Now that it’s started it’s impossible to stop and Will hates it, he hates the feeling of tears on his face, he hates the fact that Hannibal thinks he won them. He shudders at the feeling of a hand against him and bites his lip on a low whine.

Slowly, Will feels the shudders subside, the lump in his throat evaporate.

He can’t name the reason, but the touches get softer, the entire demeanor above him changes and Will wants to scream.

Because he knew, he fucken knew how to do this to him.

 _You will cry for me alone_. Because for him alone, Will wants to be important.

He arches his back when Hannibal grazes his prostate, unable to convince his body to obey, and not respond, unable to do anything but gasp his pleasure and press his hand against frustrated hot tears.

Hannibal curves low over the boy, between his thighs and pushing into his hips and forcing a hard bend in his back in order to steal the flustered sounds from his mouth. He moves past them, to his cheek, to taste his skin still warm and damp.

Amusement curls his lips, feeling the boy’s body respond beneath him and revelling absolutely in the complete control that he holds over Will in that moment. He’s certain the boy will make him suffer for it once he’s stopped twitching, spasming outside of his own possession, but for now he’s entirely pliant, entirely weak despite his obvious and fearsome courage, and Hannibal’s ribs feel as though they’re pulling tighter for the pleasure of it.

He finishes with a low moan, a perfunctory release far less intriguing than the boy staring daggers at him from red-rimmed eyes, glistening in the corners. Noting this, it pulls another unfurling of pleasure from him, before he removes himself slowly from inside the boy.

And just as quickly, with his other hand wrapped around the head of Will’s cock to stroke in quick little jerks, he presses his fingers inside of him, feeling his own release slick against the boy’s entrance, and he curls his fingers brutally against Will’s prostate.

The sound Will makes is weak, utterly helpless, and his brows furrow as his lips fall slack.

It feels good, too good, and Will hates that too, hates that Hannibal knows him this well already, that he can bring him to the edge and over with clever fingers and that motherfucken smile.

Will relishes in calling Hannibal obscenities in his mind as his breathing becomes faster, ragged, his back arches harder and he opens his eyes to watch the room upside down as pleasure draws him closer and closer to climax.

He cums with a moan, a shudder that wracks his entire body, and he swallows hard, brings a hand to press to his eyes so his gasps don’t become sobs again.

“Why?” he asks after a moment, when Hannibal has leaned close to draw his lips over Will’s wet cheeks, kissing the taste of his momentary flare of terror away.

“What did that prove?” WilI’s tone is harsh, clearly displeased, clearly upset, but something deeper than that, a question beyond the general anger: will you ever make me feel like that again and mean it?

Hannibal wraps a hand beneath the boy’s neck and tugs him upward to sit against him, straddling his lap. He studies Will’s eyes, narrowed sharply beneath his hair, each in turn. Remembers how he looked with a handprint of blood drawn across his mouth, with a knife between his teeth, displaying himself obscenely with the still-warm body of a victim mere feet away.

He pushes Will’s curls back out of his face.

“That I am nothing like them,” Hannibal responds, “and neither are you.”

Will’s jaw works, he swallows. For a long moment his eyes don’t leave Hannibal’s at all. He considers his words, considers their accuracy, potential arguments, feels those die, fade like moth wings by a flame. Then he turns away, lets his eyes close as Hannibal’s lips brush his cheekbone again, suddenly so gentle, so caring.

Nurturing the pain Will feels, conditioning it into him. That he will cry for no one else.

And that he will be made to cry again.

He winces when he tries to move, feeling raw and sore and utterly used.

When he turns back to Hannibal it’s to curve his neck gently, to tilt his head and nuzzle against the man’s throat, against his calm heartbeat.

Hannibal adjusts for the gesture, and after a brief unsettling, draws him up from the floor. Will’s skinny legs wrap around him as he’s brought to the bed, at least for now mindless of the mess of having him there.

He notes the clothes strewn and dropped in their wake, and allows himself to be mindless of that as well, and a residual hitch in Will’s breath is enough to draw him down beside him again, allowing the boy to pull near.

_For me alone._

Will finds comfort in the metronome beat of Hannibal’s heart, constant, slow. It hadn’t once sped when he’d held him, hadn’t once risen beyond his resting beat. He takes comfort in it now, but he knows he will hear it again, the same speed, same beat, when next his face is pressed to the ground, his body pulled taut, and the monster makes him cry again.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“There is blood on the ceiling, Will.”_
> 
> _Will carefully directs his gaze where indicated and finds his bottom lip between his teeth so as not to smile._
> 
> _“There is blood on the ceiling.” he agrees softly_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for this chapter: blood, lots of blood, humiliation, first part of a double chapter (to be filled tomorrow, so never fear).

“There is blood on the ceiling, Will.”

Will carefully directs his gaze where indicated and finds his bottom lip between his teeth so as not to smile.

“There is blood on the ceiling.” he agrees softly, feeling the nervousness bubble up within him, pulling at that strange, unpleasant sensation that makes him want to laugh where he shouldn’t. A sensation like tickling, at once pleasant and far from it. He bites his lips harder, folds his arms over his chest and presses the tips of his fingers against skin hard enough to leave it pale.

He must have hit the carotid artery when the man had tried to choke him, a wild swing behind him hoping for the best. He isn’t sure if he quite managed.

He can feel the irritation coming off Hannibal in waves, knows, from weeks of this, now, what that means, and yet he can’t bring himself to apologise, to even make excuses.

The fact of the matter is that he’d been tired, angry, horny as hell, and Hannibal’s instructions to him had been to return to study while he attended his conference in Florida. He had never specified which study to return to. Will clings to that loophole with every inch of willpower he has left.

“At least,” he tries, “I killed him in the kitchen.”

The doctor's eyes close.

“You did.”

Hannibal still tastes wine on the sigh that leaves him, having scarcely arrived home from the airport and poured a glass before the phone rang.

Almost as though it were intentional.

As though this infuriating boy had gone through his things again to find his flight information, and time this for his arrival.

Hannibal opens his eyes again.

Blood splashed in lawn-sprinkler sprays across the ceiling and the walls. Blood pooled on the floor, with Will's bare feet still in it. Blood coagulating rapidly in the wounds of the newly deceased owner of the pleasant upscale condo where Will had chosen to make his mark.

Many marks, in truth.

He steps closer to Will, eyes dark as he takes in the skinny jeans tugged up to rest undone against his hips, the blood soaking dark through the cuffs where he stands. Reaching slowly, feeling Will’s rising alarm ringing tinny and sharp in the air, Hannibal lifts the boy’s chin with the side of his finger. Turns his face, this way and that, to see the darkening bruises left by hands other than Hannibal's own.

Will looks for something resembling concern in the doctor's expression, and finds nothing near it, as though studied from a great distance rather than so near.

His hand relaxes to caress, and just as quickly tightens against Will's jaw, to bring him nearer still and crush his mouth against the boy's lips, still flushed from fucking, from fighting. Adrenaline spiking his pulse, sending his heart thudding against his ribs, as Hannibal's tongue draws up the taste of him.

Hannibal turns him roughly, fingers digging against his cheek. Frustration. Annoyance. Lust. Overpowering desire to reclaim what's his after a several long days of not feeling the boy’s heat and movement snared against him. With little mind for the fine suit that still scents of canned airplane oxygen, Hannibal looms over the boy. Slides his hand down the small of the boy's back, beneath his loosened jeans, to scratch lines against the sensitive skin where the curve of his ass meets his thigh.

“I had planned for a quiet evening at home,” Hannibal intones, the gentle warmth of his voice at odds with the broad hands grasping greedy at the boy he holds against him. He buries his nose against Will’s hair, breathes him in and sighs a low sound, a warning tremor before an earthquake. “You have prevented me from enjoying that, so tell me then of your night,” he rumbles softly, releasing the boy’s throat to push a hand back through the mop of hair and smooth it back from his face. His hand follows the curve of Will’s ass, finding the dampness between his cheeks and pressing against it, lip twitching into something alarmingly akin to a snarl.

“In detail.”

Will swallows, hands still resting against Hannibal’s chest where they had come up to cling to him at the rough yank forward. The danger of this tastes rough on his tongue. He knows Hannibal is angry, he knows he’s tamping down the fire of it, waiting for Will’s words to fuel it to white again.

He considers, for a brief moment, telling Hannibal he missed him.

He licks his lips, parts them on a sigh.

“He picked me up,” he says softly, knowing no matter how quietly he speaks, Hannibal will hear the words, will absorb them, “It’s colder, now, he said he wanted to warm me up, take care of me.”

He bites the inside of his lip as Hannibal’s hand presses further between his cheeks, fingers roughly holding him spread as one seeks to gently stroke him. He feels the growl more than hears it, it’s so low.

“Said he wanted a boy he could keep, to feed and play with and touch and dress…”

Will lets his eyes close, tilts his head back further in submission.

“He was so gentle with me.”

Hannibal consumes the words, lets them drip sweet as wine against his mouth, pressed to the boy's cheek, to his jaw, to his ear.

"And this is how you choose to repay such kindness," Hannibal murmurs, turning the boy until his back is against the counter, relishing the way his bare feet slide through blood still wet on the tile floor. "You are a far crueler creature than I could have imagined."

His mouth spreads warm against Will's neck.

"Ungrateful."

Teeth, now, scraping rough just beneath his jaw.

"Destructive."

A finger presses just inside of him and a moan catches just the end of Hannibal's sigh.

"Careless, messy boy."

He pins him roughly against the counter, snarling a hand through his hair to bend him back over it. "And now you've left all that for me to clean up behind you. What's to be done about that?"

Will gasps, brings his lip between his teeth a moment before continuing, ignoring Hannibal’s words…

“He fucked me so slow,” his voice breaks on the word, careful, deliberate, “I could have sobbed from it… and then he hit me, again and again, telling me I had to earn the gentleness, earn the kindness he gave me.”

He feels Hannibal step closer to him, wonders if his pristine shoes are getting blood on more than the soles, wonders if he’ll glance down and remember when they get home, who had done this.

“Told me to beg him,” Will can feel the smile tugging his lips, tries to force it down. “I did.”

He spreads his legs wider, hands curled back against the counter to keep himself balanced as Hannibal bends him further, leans closer in.

“He told me to cry for him,” Will starts, feeling his heart race with the desperate, hungry need for Hannibal to fuck him. Touch him. Murmur burning words against his skin.

He’s been gone four days, and Will has felt as though the absence would eat his soul.

Obsessive.

Compulsive.

Impatient.

Messy.

“I did,” he moans.

Someone else touching his boy. Striking _his_ boy. Drawing pleas and tears that belong to Hannibal alone. The truth of his statements doesn't matter - the thought of it alone is enough to pull Hannibal's lips into a snarl past clenched teeth and in one swift movement Hannibal throws Will to the floor at his feet.

His knees crack hard against the tile and in an instant Hannibal is over him, around him, grabbing him around the waist and forcing his pants around his thighs. Hannibal plants a hand between Will's shoulders and shoves his face to the floor still soaked in gore to jerk his jeans free of his skinny legs with a savagery that threatens to tear them seam from seam.

As he will do to Will, Hannibal muses. As he's desired to do to him since the moment he left.

"Four days. Four days I am gone and in four days you have forgotten every lesson I had hoped you might remember, for as clever as you think yourself to be."

Little care for stains, little care for the blood soaking cold against the knees of his trousers, little care for anything but reminding Will to whom his body and his breath and his tears belong.

Hannibal strokes himself brusquely, unnecessary for how hard he already finds himself, and lines himself up against Will's entrance, curling over him to breathe a cool threat against the back of the boy's neck.

"It appears I will need to be much harsher in my lessons, then, to ensure you do not forget them again." A kiss, lingering long against the trembling skin beneath him. "Perhaps you will cry for him again since you seem so willing to share it."

Will’s lips part in sympathy to how hard he’s penetrated but he makes no sound beyond a soft little choke. In truth, the man had been violent, animalistic in his desire for Will, already possessive of him, demanding, without even knowing Will’s name.

It had taken him a long while struggling against the bonds holding him still before Will finally found an out. In that time the man had rained all holy hell on him.

He arches his back, now, for Hannibal, and his hands slip against the tile as he tries to find balance.

“He tied me down -” Will’s words leave him in a rush, gasped, “Beat me… left bruises but no marks no -”

Hannibal pushes Will flat again and he goes, relishes in this anger, this intense desire to possess, to own and claim. Familiar fingers wrap in his hair and tug enough to deepen the bend, to draw his face up enough to see the carnage spreading scarlet before him.

“And you wept for him, Will,” Hannibal growls against his skin, through clenched teeth. “You rewarded him with that.” Out of pain? Pleasure? The boy’s desire for destruction of himself and others?

It matters not. He wept, and he will suffer for it.

Hannibal rocks brutally against him, skin slapping against skin in the room gone quiet but for the sound of violent rutting, of Will’s choked gasps and Hannibal’s low snarls. A hand finds Will’s cock, palm sliding against the fine hairs that curl there to wrap around him and pull in languid strokes, off-time from the brutal movements of his own hips, squeezing just a little too hard.

Will’s whimper draws a groan from Hannibal, and he pushes the boy’s face back against the floor, against the blood that coats his cheek in crimson.

“Is this what you would make of me, too, then?” Hannibal asks, affecting a hurt in his tone, entirely false but falling soft from his lips. “No better than this one, no different.”

Will doesn’t answer beyond another soft wail.

He’d missed him - and the thought struck deep beneath his ribs and held, like a chink in the bone that ached when he breathed.

“He couldn’t make me,” he manages, moaning loudly when Hannibal’s hand twists on the upstroke. His balls draw tight, he deepens the arch in his back, pushes further, lets his knees slip wide against the mess on the floor.

“Hannibal -”

He purrs approval as Will whimpers his name, blood from the floor smeared across his lips as they form it. Hannibal’s pace does not soften - somehow, it quickens, deepens, until the boy’s knees slip from beneath him in a skid against wet tile and Hannibal brings his weight down with him. He pulls his hand free from beneath Will to let the boy grind himself against the floor, slick with blood instead of the friction he desires, and plants his hands on either side of him to drive him into the ground.

“A liar, then,” Hannibal breathes, voice rough as he feels sharp, coiling tension drawing fast inside him. “Deceitful, attention-seeking boy.”

He supports himself on one hand to twist a hand into Will’s hair again and watch his lips part breathless as the boy’s hips move beneath him, seeking harsher contact with the floor beneath him and not finding it for the slickness of blood.

“Tell me,” comes the snarl, mouth pressing to Will’s temple as Hannibal lays low over him, “did you think of me when he struck you?”

A trembled little noise and Will inhales quickly through his nose, fingers curling in the blood beneath him, slick and messy and utterly depraved. It’s revolting. And he can’t remember ever being harder.

“It could be a lie,” he gasps, “You won’t believe my words, I could lie, I could -”

Hannibal finds the spot within that makes Will’s entire body quiver and he pants helplessly, trying to get his feet under himself again, trying to push back.

A small laugh escapes him and Will’s body shivers violently with the overwhelming sensation.

“Only when I called him a cunt,” he murmurs, managing another soft, pleased noise before the fingers in his hair pull harsher and bend him nearly in half.

Despite himself, his fury, his eagerness to bury himself in this infuriating boy again and again until he’s breathless and aching and can hardly drag himself from the floor, Hannibal jerks hard at the word. A sudden tension of muscle that curls through him, releases heat spilling inside Will with a single, hard breath against his neck.

A moment of stillness, dire in its silence, before he pushes himself upward with anger - raw, seething anger at his own lack of control and the one who so carelessly coaxed it from him - and pulls out. Hannibal stands, blood-stained and sweating, and looms over the boy sprawled out beneath him.

“And why should I believe a word you say when the only ones that fall from your mouth are filth,” Hannibal answers, his voice low, controlled, an effort to make it so when his heart is still pounding in his chest.

He perceives the barest movement, hands drawing up to push off the floor, hips twitching to still seek release, and calmly presses his foot against the center of Will’s back.

“You will rise to your hands and knees, Will,” Hannibal instructs. “I will give you a rag and you will not raise from the ground until you’ve cleaned the mess you’ve made.” A faint sound from the boy forces Hannibal’s heel down, only slightly but enough to make the point. “And if any new mess is made dripping from you, you’ll clean it from the floor with your tongue.”

Will whimpers, a sound that carries, that hangs between his teeth when he grits those, red-smeared and white beneath. He hesitates when the heel of Hannibal’s shoe comes away from his back, his limbs are shaking and his head is spinning and he is so wound up, so close to release where it’s denied him.

Slowly, he brings his hands close to his chest, flat on the floor, and he pushes up with his shoulders before sliding his knees closer to his center and levering up until he’s on all fours, as Hannibal wants him.

He lets his eyes take in the floor, smeared in a grotesque sort of human shape where he had moments before struggled against Hannibal on top of him. The blood is tacky now, cooling and drying, and Will finds no end to it in the kitchen; it’s on the cabinets, the doors…

He swallows, hair hanging lank, dripping perfectly round drops of red between his hands. When he looks up, a drop catches just under his eye and slips to the corner of his mouth. He presses his lips together, tries not to smile at how stunning Hannibal looks, covered in blood and disheveled.

“If you insist on behaving like filth, then you will crawl among it.” Hannibal toes off his shoes, leaving them in the kitchen as he steps back to the room that’s not smeared in gore, to remove his socks as well. Primly, perhaps, with a quick unsnapping of the garters that hold them, before depositing them in his bag.

He gathers towels - expensive, made for cleaning industrial electronics so as not to leave fibers behind - from his bag. A quiet hum as he returns to observe the boy still there on the floor, bowed and kneeling, covered hair to feet in gore that clots dark against his pale skin and still, beneath a particularly shocking amount of blood, aching hard.

“Making elegance out of depravity,” Hannibal echoes, unable to resist the pleasure that creeps into his voice as he holds a towel to Will.

Just out of reach.

Will’s eyes flick down to the towel and he presses his bottom lip out of shape, considering. Hannibal’s tone has fallen into that delicious velvet-smooth threat Will wakes hearing in his ear. He swallows again, then moves to crawl forward.

He fights both irritation and amusement when the towel gets progressively pulled back, until Will is at the very edge of the tile, hands and knees, like a dog.

He tongues the drop of blood from the corner of his mouth and sets his knees to rest wider apart.

“May I have the towel?” he murmurs.

Hannibal makes another pleased noise, faint, and a smile manifests just in the corners of his eyes, a slight crinkle. It’s an act, this obedience, the movements too precise and practiced to be anything else, but it isn’t any less lovely to see the boy so debased and gentled.

And to remember with an ember of warmth what brought him to it.

“You may,” Hannibal responds, and he lets Will take it. “You are rather fetching when you’re not behaving like an animal.”

A compliment, or near enough to one despite the irony of it being uttered to a blood-covered boy on all fours, from the one who pinned him there. Hannibal steps around the boy to begin cleaning the cabinets. Quick movements, precise and elegant.

In truth, the insolence is as pleasing as the obedience. One without the other would be entirely tedious - far too common and readily devoured to suit Hannibal’s tastes. The awareness that the boy could just as soon prowl against his leg to climb him and lay affection in gentle nuzzles beneath his chin as he could draw up behind him with the towel wrapped around both fists to suffocate him is intoxicating.

A paradox of sex and violence, beautiful and uncouth, obedient and impudent, brilliant and rife with youthful foolishness.

Hannibal glances back over his shoulder, charmed by the poetic mood the boy has stirred within him, and allows himself to watch Will stretch his skinny limbs to mop up the blood, wincing faintly from the strain of his arousal that lingers in spite - or because - of the mess around him.

The towel seems to do little beyond spread the mess around, and Will presses his hands against it to soak instead, folding it carefully over itself to use the most of the dry area it provides. He finds he can’t reach the sink on his knees, and sets the towel just beneath it instead, crawling to Hannibal carefully and sitting back on his heels.

The blood is drying on his skin now, maroon and darker, pulling taut at his skin like egg white would when left too long. A new membrane on living skin.

Will directs his eyes up, does not move his chin; demure.

He licks his lips.

“Once this is done,” he murmurs, “Will we go home?”

Hannibal regards him at the question, not unkindly, having made short work of the swathes of arterial spray newly streaked across the walls and ceiling.

The question resonates, longer than Hannibal expects it to, and he lowers a gloved hand to curl beneath the boy's chin and lift it upward. To face him, and to let Hannibal look upon him. He traces a latex-clad thumb across the boy's lips, watches as he chases it, seeking warmth away from the cold floor and colder blood.

The touch coaxes Will to stand, knees sore and legs unsteady, and Hannibal draws him near with an arm across his shoulders. Lets him warm himself for a moment, and brushes a kiss along his brow.

"We will," he finally answers. "We might have been there already if not for your dalliance." A glance over his shoulder to the remaining puddles, to the body laid motionless on the floor.

"I am grateful you endeavored upon yourself to create such an evening for us. Finish your work, and we will take your new friend with us to make the most of your acquaintanceship."

Will’s eyes flick between Hannibal’s and he takes full advantage of being allowed to press himself close to the warm, currently forgiving, body in front of him. To spread the blood against it where he knows Hannibal will stiffen, detest the mess against him, the blood of someone he personally finds uninteresting and, for his actions, vile.

To roll his hips against him and bite his lip, eyes down to where his fingers trace maroon patterns over the corner of Hannibal’s shirt collar.

In truth, though he finds no pleasure in the idea of eating the man, he finds no utter revulsion either. Hannibal’s method is one that fascinates him, one that confuses and intrigues, and he wonders if perhaps he can one day coax the man to tell him how he had come upon it, why he had chosen to consume this way.

Though, if asked, Will doesn’t know how to explain his particular pathology to anyone either. He has no reason to do what he does, he has no driving need to kill, he has a fascination with the human mind and a preference for sex and destruction. He is not compelled to kill, he chooses to.

Perhaps lectures had taught him something after all.

He hums quietly, directs his eyes up again.

“Must I keep cleaning?” it’s coy, soft, and he rolls his hips forward again, eyelids barely flickering with the need behind the motion.

Hannibal hardly hears the words for the attention he’s focused on his hapless shirt collar, an innocent bystander ruined by a delinquent boy.

An entire suit, truly, lost to the attention he demands and that Hannibal can’t help but yield to him, the tasteful checks and expensive material stained and sloppy from the lack of resistance to Will’s particular charms.

Worth it, certainly, for the experience of laying the boy spread and whimpering beneath him in a murder of his own making, although Hannibal’s expression shows nothing beyond a cool disinterest for the warm body grinding softly against his hip.

“Finish your work.” A pause, the particular scent of sweat and semen catching his nose, warmed against the boy’s bare thighs, and as he moves away to tend to the remains, he adds without inflection, “And clean yourself up before I have to do that for you, as well.”

Will stands as he's left, hands at his sides as a smile curls his lips. He doesn’t move to follow Hannibal. Instead he's thankful that he can just reach another clean towel without messing up the floor beyond the kitchen.

For a while, he sets his concentration on deliberately cleaning the mess on the floor, the bloody towels left to soak in the sink while Will turns to use the end of the remaining one in his hand to wipe up the mess against his legs.

He remembers how Hannibal had relished in his helplessness, how he had enjoyed watching Will struggle against him, mess himself further with the blood.

He wonders if Hannibal had imagined the blood belonging to Will, if he had imagined him in genuine pain.

He grins, remembering that his language had not been corrected as it usually was. He wonders if he can push for another time without reprimand.

Hannibal feels the boy’s attention shift, hears the movement of the towel against the floor slow from attentive scrubs to absent sweeps, but pays it no mind. Pays him no mind, in fact, instead focusing on the relative difficulty of getting Will’s victim to the car.

At least he was thoughtful enough to choose one on the ground floor this time, and a victim that weighs at least half of the last.

Mental calculations, quick and pensive through the blinds - freshly scrubbed - and a twinge of displeasure as he remembers that his suit is conspicuously filthy.

No matter. The boy will feel the repercussions of it later.

He hums an aria softly to himself as he lays down plastic, absorbent padding in particular places and turns the body onto them from where it lays crumpled to the ground, to observe the boy’s work. A laceration several inches deep, driven at a downward angle past the clavicle. Incidental that it happened to sever both major vessels there, but lucky.

“He had you from behind,” Hannibal observes, his tone cool. Distant. “You brought the knife back behind you when he leaned in to leave that mark on your shoulder. It stuck, and when you pulled it free…” a pause, glancing upward. “The ceiling.”

Will’s eyes go to the man again, briefly narrow, before he blinks and looks at Hannibal instead. The description is entirely accurate, if you cut aside the panic coursing through Will’s veins at the time, the way the man’s breath smelled awful and the things he was whispering against Will as he rutted into him.

Having it broken down to something clinical makes it… almost dull.

He wonders if Hannibal is bored with the kill. With him.

“He got it into his mind to mark his property.” he says quietly, shrugging the shoulder Hannibal had referred to, a bite mark there only, though more could have been.

“He had nothing to brand me with.” his tone is calm, almost as indifferent as Hannibal’s, but he does swallow.

Hannibal tilts his head, as though hearing something very far away, and crouches to continue wrapping up the man who’s now, at least, conveniently bled out.

“You were frightened,” Hannibal observes, the same impartial tone he uses in therapy. “It does not happen often.”

He feels the boy’s ruffling reaction without a word or breath between them, imagines blue eyes narrowing at his back.

“And when the first spray of blood fell against your skin,” Hannibal wonders, “how did that make you feel?”

Will licks his lips to resist calling Hannibal the name he had called the man he’s wrapping. It gives him an almost unholy pleasure to remember how that word was what made Hannibal cum, in the end.

“Righteous.” he replies honestly, raises an eyebrow when Hannibal turns back to look at him.

“I do this for no one but myself. I don’t care who he’s hurt, I don’t care who he would continue hurting had my eye not fallen on him. I’m not a vigilante.” he draws a hand through his hair, matted and dried in tangles with caked blood.

“He wronged me, personally, attempting to lay claim on something that wasn’t his to claim.”

He says nothing of Hannibal’s unspoken ownership of him, nor of Will’s permission and delight in it.

_Heart of Ba’al._

_Owner._

“Would I make an interesting patient, doctor, that you ask me?” he smiles, teasing.

The honesty of the answer, of the prideful declarations earns him a brief glance over Hannibal’s shoulder. He studies the boy, the hand curling fingers soft against his leg, blood flaking from pale skin left stained beneath it, and the boy’s clever eyes studying him just as fiercely in return.

“Perhaps,” comes the response, wholly unsatisfying, but not yet willing to yield the ground he’s gained in the exchange. “Murder without motive can be the act of a mind simply made to express itself in such a way, as one might art or music. It can also become little more than wrath, foolish and forceful.”

“I’ve yet to determine where you fall in that.”

Hannibal stands, adjust his gloves without looking towards Will again. “Go wash yourself. Leave no traces. You will help me move him to the car.”

Will inclines his head, only in so far as to watch Hannibal as he passes him. He considers the carpet, his feet, covered in blood and probably more besides. The towel only does so much, but at least he doesn’t leave marks when he walks back through to the bedroom and to the bathroom beyond.

The man had lived messily, the way Hannibal would detest if he went this far into the house. Will considers the piles of clothes - thankfully clean - that rest on the sink, by the toilet, as he turns on the shower and waits for the water to reach the temperature he needs.

He doesn’t watch the blood flow down the drain, he’s seen enough of it for one day, has had its metallic sting fill his nostrils, his mouth, his ears… every sense violated by it, fuelled by it. Will opens his mouth to take in the warm water, rinse his mouth and spit it away. He runs his fingers through his hair, feels them snag in the tangles, remembers the way Hannibal had gripped it so tight he had felt follicles part with his scalp.

He hears his own gasp above the sound of the water, soft and pleased and warm, and drags his hands down his face, over his neck, feels the slippery skin beneath his fingers, no longer sticky with blood but clean again, warm. Lower to his stomach, palms resting against his hipbones, fingertips barely stroking the smooth skin of his groin before Will arches back, just enough, feels the hot water cascade down his entire form.

He thinks of Hannibal’s voice, rough with anger, with possessiveness, with that low purr that spoke of monster and monster alone. Will thinks of how roughly he’d been treated, for Hannibal’s pleasure, not for Will’s. He thinks, he remembers, he touches…

He circles himself with one hand, stroking slowly, brings his other up to rest fisted against the tile wall. He ducks his head, watches the final traces of red drip from his hair as his gasps turn to pants turn to soft little moans of need.

Four days he has gone without this, without blood, without the residual sting of Hannibal against him, within him. Four days and Will feels starved for it, like he’s crawling out of his skin. His hand moves faster, squeezing harder by the head until Will’s arm bends against the wall and he rests heavily against it, forehead pressed just beneath it to the cool tile.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,”

Eyes closed, lips parted, back arching. Imagining Hannibal behind him yanking his hips back and bending him further, promising him all levels of hell for his foul mouth when they get home --

He cums hard, a moan echoing around the shower, softened by the water and steam.

Will pants, calms his breathing and lets the water cascade over his back, wash the evidence of his crimes away. Slowly, his lips tug up, stretch into a smile, and Will arches his neck to nuzzle against his arm with another quiet expletive.

When he returns to the other room, he’s in his jeans again, shirt still in his hands and hair dripping down his back. He gives Hannibal not a glance as he stops just on the border of the tiles in the kitchen.

There are no traces of his footprints on the floor, no trace at all, in fact, of a murder, beyond the dead body. Will bites his lip and settles his shirt over his shoulders before starting to do the buttons.

He is instructed, clinically, to manage the doors - covering his fingerprints - as Hannibal hoists the parceled remains with only minimal difficulty. Unwieldy weight, but its unsteadiness familiar enough to one who has moved so many.

A convenient absence of other tenants in the new complex, and a parking spot directly outside the door, finds the man bundled across the backseat of the Bentley. Hannibal makes a vague noise, a note of worry for the lambskin leather, and reminds himself that next time Will has an outing that he’ll need to bring extra plastic sheeting.

Will has only just shifted, stretching languid against the seat that heats beneath him when the car starts, when Hannibal’s hand presses across the back of his neck. He tugs the boy closer, firmly, and presses his mouth into his still-damp hair, down his cheek, catching his mouth for only a moment before moving to his neck. Will’s chin lifts and a smile curls across his lips again, irredeemably pleased with himself.

“Was it satisfying?” An innocent enough question, but the tenor to it belies something darker, a shadows shapeless yet beneath night-black waters. Hannibal does not wait for a response, and the movement takes clearer form. “Easing your own frustrations, rather than only doing as I told you?”

He doesn't explain how he knows - the keen hearing that brought a moan to his ears, the sharp sense of smell that even after showering was filled with the warm notes of the boy's release.

"It might have been a far more rewarding evening for us both had you waited,” continues Hannibal, dulcet tones rendered with a menacing gentility. “It may be that you are a far less interesting study than I had envisioned - merely a petulant boy who refuses to control himself.”

Hannibal presses a hand against the boy’s belly, lets fingers skim beneath his shirt and into the coarse denim he wears, brushing just soft against the fine hairs there but going no lower.

“Since you are adamantly capable of providing for yourself, perhaps then it’s best that I simply bring you home. Your address, Will.”

Will sighs, a soft noise of displeasure carrying on it but as yet unvoiced. He knows Hannibal means it, knows the man’s infuriating desire to see Will squirm.

"You cannot hide behind words never uttered," Will murmurs, licking his lips, chin still up for the man to smell, to taste him.

"You never told me I couldn’t." He points out, knowing his own words will win no favor back.

He swallows. Gives his address. Every intention to have the man fuck him senseless against the first flat surface they encounter.

Will’s meagre argument finds no ground, no response at all in fact as Hannibal releases him to drive. Silence, lingering heavy in the car, as though there’s no one there, resisting the urge to watch the boy fidget with his sleeves and shift against his seatbelt and press the side of his thumb between his teeth.

It’s more difficult than Hannibal had anticipated, but he does not yield until they reach the apartment.

“Go.”

The car is still running, parked and purring soft.

“You will wait for me to return, and when you do, you will be bare. On your hands and knees, as before, since it appears to be the only manner befitting of your behavior enough that you will conduct yourself as I expect.”

A dark amusement in his voice. “Do not think yourself so clever, dear Will, that I will not know if you’ve done otherwise in my absence.”

Will turns to him, chin raised and smile soft. Without a word he leans in to kiss him, a sloppy messy thing.

"Do not think yourself so patient," he whispers back, a brief, oddly affectionate nuzzle against him before Will pulls back, undoes his seat belt. It's very late or very early, depending on which side of the night one looks.

"It's apartment six," he tells him, opening the door and turning to bend gracefully once he's out to keep talking.

"I'll leave it unlocked."

He considers more disobedience, pointing out he can do any number of things for such, but he knows Hannibal knows. Instead he just grins, straightens, and shuts the door.

Watching for a moment more, to take in the long strides, the sweep of the wind through Will’s hair, the cocksure movements that carry him away, Hannibal sighs.

Infuriating boy.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"I have ached," Will breathes, licks his lips, "in waiting and aftermath. For you to... take me." A careful avoidance of an expletive. "For four days."_
> 
> Warnings for this chapter: spanking, slapping, wordporn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is going on a brief hiatus till SUNDAY JULY 6TH as real life catches up with both writers for a bit.

The car peels out softly, and is gone.

For several hours, in fact. Ample enough time for Hannibal to return home, dismantle and store the boy’s kill, and mourn the suit that must be similarly disposed of in its sacrifice to Will. Dinner is prepared and eaten, a shower taken, and Hannibal applies a simple white button-down, black suitcoat and slacks. Throughout the time, before he settles back into the Bentley - thankfully free of stains thanks to his careful containment of Will’s mess - he finds himself frustratingly unable to think of much beyond Will.

He is clever, though Hannibal attests to himself that it would do very little good to let him know just how bright he is. The ease with which he reads Hannibal proves unsettling, at times, and thrilling at others as Will’s astute attentions pry so readily beneath the masks that Hannibal exchanges effortlessly. Masks that he’s spent a lifetime perfecting, and the existence of which very few others have ever been made aware and lived.

A moment more, to draw out the anticipation, as he parks before the boy’s building and envisions him with sore knees from kneeling, fidgeting in aggravation for being made to wait, his mind working through every potential cruelty with which Hannibal may provide him.

And just as readily, Hannibal knows the boy has spent the hours in his wait doing anything but what he asked, and he hums to himself as he exits the car.

Infuriating boy.

The apartment is surprisingly well-appointed, for someone Will’s age and appropriate demographic. Past the corridor is a living area, lit by a dim lamp, and filled with books. Bookcases line the walls, books unable to fit rest in piles beside them.

Anything from the latest crime novel to Ovid, Socrates... books on science and technology, on law and law enforcement. All look read, touched, enjoyed, and Hannibal has to smile.

Within the living area itself, hugging the corner the corridor turns, is a tiny alcove kitchen. On the island that serves also as the table and bar, sits a half-finished glass of wine.

The bedroom Is beyond, the shower and bathroom assuredly within, through the closet perhaps, as cheap apartments tend to save space. Hannibal considers the wine, smiles despite himself, and continues on.

The bedroom is little, the bed taking up what room yet more bookcases leave. And on the bed, obedient, legs spread wide and cock semi-hard already, kneels Will. Head ducked, breaths coming slow, as he rocks his hips forward against air and finds no friction. 

He turns to look at Hannibal, smile languid, sleepy, and slides forward into a pleasurable cat stretch that arches his back and raises his hips. He groans, a desperately pleasing noise, and curls his fingers In the sheets. 

Drawing a breath, incrementally deeper than before, at the sound, Hannibal watches Will, sees the movement of his soft sounds in the stretch of ribs beneath pale skin. He removes his coat and passes by the bed, feeling Will’s attention follow him as he hangs his coat as though it were his own home rather than an unfamiliar apartment. His attention is drawn briefly to the much-loathed sweater that hangs limply there before he turns back towards the boy.

A warm hand, broad and strong, skims from between Will’s shoulders to follow the dip of his back and up onto the curve of his ass, pleased as the boy’s hips move beneath his touch in response. He appraises the boy’s conformation at length, fingertips trailing scarcely felt along the back of his thighs, and drawn back up along the inside. Pleased when the boy does not turn to watch, but only moans again with another press of hips against air.

Resourceful, to kneel on the bed rather than the floor, an instruction not given but assumed. The boy had adeptly sought out the loophole, as is his tendency, and taken advantage of it to ease the strain of himself surely, but - Hannibal notes with veiled amusement - to also give reason to his knees not showing the marks of holding this particular posture.

“Tell me, Will,” Hannibal muses, firmly grasping the join of Will’s thigh to his groin - not yet touching the boy’s cock that he can see twitching harder by the moment, but frustratingly close. “Where do you ache?”

Will laughs, tired and pleased, and pushes himself to all fours again. 

"Chronologically or alphabetically?" he asks, amused and soft, obviously desperate for touch again, despite having been fucked twice, today, at least.

"I have ached," he breathes, licks his lips, "in waiting and aftermath. For you to... take me." A careful avoidance of an expletive. "For four days."

A reward, for this. Hannibal strokes the side of his finger along the underside of Will’s cock to feel it twitch, to see the boy’s fingers tighten against the sheets.

He can’t resist pressing his mouth to the boy’s shoulder, pale grey traces of teeth upon it, a mark left by another that will soon fade forgotten. The kiss is open-mouthed, warm, a caress of tongue against Will’s youthful sweet skin freshly scrubbed.

“What did you do, Will, as you ached in my absence?”

The touches draw away again.

Will gasps, but stays surprisingly stoically still. It feels good, this denouement to the evening, a promise of a slow, deep fucking.

"I touched, " he murmurs. "Legs spread and fingers pushed deep. Mm, never quite deep enough." Another roll of hips, the motion so utterly pleasing. 

He arches against the memory of the hot mouth on his shoulder, bites his lip on a smile.

"I filled the space with crude words and enjoyed their implications."

The sound Hannibal makes in response is one of amusement at the admission, a genuine pleasure at imagining such things and the coiling undulations of the boy waiting before him now.

“Misbehaving as soon as I take leave,” Hannibal murmurs, clicking his tongue in feigned disapproval but seemingly unintent to act upon it. A hand strokes through Will’s curls, gathers them for a gentle tug and then releases them as Hannibal’s other hand presses to his skin again, sliding down between the boy’s cheeks to press his palm against his opening, a slow glide downward past his balls to stroke his cock, a languid, firm tug.

Only once, before he releases it. 

“And when you were unable to relieve yourself in such a way, tell me, Will - what did you do as you sat fidgeting in your lectures?”

Will moans, thighs spreading barely wider.

"I imagined," Will purrs, "your hands, your mouth, your cock in me."

He licks his lips, feeling more than seeing the man behind him smile, absorb the deliberate stroke to his ego. In truth, Will _had_ been restless. Unable to fuck without craving the hunger with which Hannibal fucked him, unable to find anyone interesting worth his time.

He realizes his words had slipped free, from his mind to his lips and he bends again, a sinuous motion.

"I ached as you ached for me," he murmurs. 

The bend is appreciated, as it allows Hannibal to bring his hand down twice in swift penance for the gentle curses that dripped sweet as honey from the boy’s lips. Not across the soft curve of his ass, but just beneath it, palm striking flat across the tender skin of his thighs.

And just as quickly Hannibal’s hands spread across Will’s skin again, delighting in the sudden startled shiver that takes him. They curl around his hips to tug him back as the bed squeaks beneath Hannibal’s weight, and his words breathe soft against the boy’s opening.

“You speak poetry when you can control yourself enough to do so,” Hannibal murmurs. “Recite for me, Will.”

Will gasps, surprised, strangely pleased, trembling with anticipation when he feels Hannibal’s mouth so near. He scans his mind, recent memory, for anything to recite that would win him favor. Wonders if reciting Faust would be considered too ironic. He parts his lips to try, and instead finds them repeating oft-recited passages from another text.

“What if the man could see Beauty Itself, pure, unalloyed, stripped of mortality, and all its pollution, stains, and vanities, unchanging, divine…” The Greek falls lyrical from Will’s lips, months and months and months of practice and honing, a long-dead language taken for the sake of being able to claim he knew it. A language started when he had been encouraged to pursue medicine rather than law, encouraged and learned with Latin, late at night in warm libraries that never closed in winter.

He gasps, feeling the promise of Hannibal’s tongue fulfilled, and tenses his muscles in pleasure, words falling silent where he’d sighed them away. A moment of silence, and the delicious pressure stops.

“Recite, William.”

Will makes a pitiful noise, the sound of his full name in that accented voice, curling the vowels and shifting the emphasis is almost enough to stutter him again, and then the tongue returns and Will’s words burst from him in a sharp exhale, flow from him like a torrent he can’t control. Memory taking over where his mind concentrates on better things, hips rocking in Hannibal’s grasp, hands tight in the sheets.

It’s a rare enough thing when Hannibal’s expectations are exceeded, but the recitation - in the original language, no less - from a beautiful and brilliant boy squirming shuddering against his tongue is certainly one of those moments.

He presses deeper still, tonguing inside Will as he pushes him forward, shoulders against the bed now and voice sweetly muffled against the bedcover. Hannibal curls a hand around to touch him, to feel the boy’s back arch upward and then bend deep again as he pulls slow tugs against his cock.

“Speak clearly.” A sudden insistence, breath cooling the boy’s damp skin before Hannibal’s tongue surges deep again, scarcely able to contain his own amusement at the instruction, at feeling Will’s body tremble undone beneath him.

Will moans, a sweet sound, almost delicate, the way he’s bent and held and enjoyed, and his next words start shakily. He arches his neck, enough to direct his words away from the sheets, into the room with surprising accuracy and coherence.

He recites from where he began, letting the words flow like a brook over smooth stones, his inflection accurate, his tone adjusted to fit. He speaks as it would have been spoken, a discussion between philosophers on the meaning of connection and love and beauty and life, in a bath house so long ago they feel like shadow.

But then Will stutters, his voice stolen by another moan, high and pleased, and his fingers clench in the sheets and he pants against them, head ducked and lips parted. He’s shaking, a thin sheen of sweat over his skin that cools him and throws his sensations into a spiral.

“Please,” he gasps.

The words, archaic and antiquated in speech though not in meaning, even still scarcely feel anachronistic as the boy speaks them. They suit him, in their wisdom and their impracticality, and as once a boy much as himself would have so pleased his philetor in that time now Hannibal finds himself as profoundly satisfied.

Beautiful words, spoken beautifully, by a beautiful boy.

Hannibal shivers and wraps his hands around the boy’s thighs to bring him closer still, to taste his movement and his warmth, to feel the keening moans bend his body. Even as he stutters, voice cracking from the effort of performing such a marvelously absurd demand, Hannibal smooths a hand over his back, parting his lips from the boy only to murmur.

“Please what, Will?”

Will’s hands clench the sheets and he no sooner draws a breath to answer than Hannibal buries his tongue inside of him, holding him firmly, fingernails pressing scarlet marks into his thighs to keep him from squirming away.

"Fuck!" It's pulled from him unexpectedly and loudly, a dirty word amidst its lyrical cousins. Will moans, an almost obscene sound, and arches his back more.

"I've been losing my mind for four days, Hannibal, Christ."

Will rocks back, careless of his brash words, blood humming with anticipation of a response as much as an aching need for Hannibal to just take him.

A low hum is pressed warmly against the boy’s opening before Hannibal shifts and his weight leaves the bed.

He watches Will start to move, to turn his head and Hannibal’s hand catches swift against the back of his neck to shove his face to the bed, shoulders low and ass exposed. His other hand is pressed against his slacks, rubbing briskly a few times against his own thigh to warm it.

“Dear Will.”

Hannibal brings his hand down hard against the boy’s ass, made sensitive by his previous attentions, to catch the soft skin where it curves to meet his thighs.

A breathless gasp, choked silent in surprise past Will’s lips, is as sweet as his words had been. As satisfying as his obedience. As thrilling at his stubborn impudence.

“And from earlier in the evening as well,” curls the soft accent, at odds with the brutal grip keeping him pinned to the bed. “What was your particular choice of word, that made you think of me? ‘Cunt’?” The word forms almost unfamiliar on Hannibal’s tongue, rarely if ever spoken by him before, and he clucks his tongue in disapproval.

“Very rude.”

Several more cruel slaps, in rapid succession. One side, and then the other.

“In the shower, Will,” Hannibal purrs gently, thumb stroking soft against the side of his neck. “When I asked you to wash yourself. How many times then?”

Will squirms, shocked, momentarily, at being treated like a child, misbehaving and incorrigible. It's humiliating and he is utterly helpless to move. He manages a few long whines against the sheets before Hannibal’s hand slows, stroking the warm skin as though to soothe it. Will’s muscles tense.

He swallows, directs his eyes as far to the side as he's allowed, smiles.

"You won’t believe me if I said none?" He teases, coy. “Or do you want to know how many fucks a thought of you is worth?"

His cock throbs between his legs and when the inevitable slap comes again, Will lets his voice carry on a cry.

“I am giving you an opportunity, Will, to ensure that this does not last until tomorrow,” Hannibal responds, blatant amusement turning up the edges of his voice in watching the boy’s fruitless struggles. “Because while I certainly can, you most certainly cannot.”

Another crack of his palm against Will’s reddening ass, purely for his own pleasure.

“The alternative,” Hannibal murmurs, “is that I simply start and do not stop until you answer me.” His touch stings hot against Will’s ass as Hannibal caresses the soft skin, warmed by his strikes. He trails the back of a finger slow down the length of Will’s hardening cock and Will shivers roughly in response.

“Your last chance, before I hold you accountable for all the foul language you used in my absence. Tell me, Will - how many times?”

A laugh, desperate and warm is pressed to the sheets and Will squirms. Amused, aroused, thoroughly humiliated. He curls his shoulders then arches back.

"Four," he admits, bringing a hand up to press his knuckles against his teeth, something to bite down on.

The urge to swear again pulls at him. He resists, wanting to deny Hannibal even one small grain of pleasure in all this. He closes his eyes, lips still stretched in a grin, and slips his other hand between his legs to circle his cock.

Hannibal’s hand finds its mark four more times, each lingering long, rubbing soft circles against his scarlet skin before the next comes down.

His fingers do not loosen from the nape of Will’s neck when the count is complete. He slides his fingers against Will’s opening, pressing just gently inside before continuing downward in quiet appreciation for the boy’s form, for his shuddering submission. Hannibal smiles faintly as he watches the boy stroke himself in this prone position.

Another slap, somehow harder than before. Will cries out and his hand tightens around himself, pulling at his cock, and Hannibal’s strike lands again.

Once for each time he strokes himself, leaving it entirely in Will’s hands to decide how long this continues.

“Insatiable boy,” Hannibal clucks softly as another slap echoes in the small room.

Will whimpers, pulls his fingers from his mouth to turn his head to bite the sheets instead, another stroke, another jerk of pain at the resulting slap. It becomes a matter of principle, one patience trying to outlast another. But Will is losing, he knows he’s losing.

He endures three more slaps, each sending red flaring behind his eyes before he drops both hands to the sheets and moans softly against them, body shaking, skin hot, hard as hell.

For a moment, nothing happens, Hannibal pleased with his inevitable victory, Will’s face flushed with having to give it up. He doesn’t let go of the sheets for a long time, turning his cheek over the wet fabric when he finally does.

“I don’t care if you hit me again for this but fuck me,” he whimpers when, predictably, he’s struck.

“Please fuck me.” It’s breathless, needy, lips red and parted, wet, eyes closed.

Hannibal sighs, and spanks him again, head tilting with a curious pleasure as the sound manifests this time as a rough gasp rather than a cry, breath shivering past Will’s lips with need, pain, lust, frustration.

The air positively sings with it, and Hannibal feels it tug warmly in his chest.

He releases the boy’s neck and notes that Will does not yet move to raise himself, watching with his cheek turned to the bed, against a cooling wet spot where his lips have dripped wetly to the sheets.

As ever, Hannibal is meticulous in removing his clothing, in hanging it on the boy’s plastic hangers despite a moment of reservation, and only as he returns to the small bed is it evident how painfully hard the entire experience has made him.

Hannibal does not seem to pay it any particular mind as he settles into the bed, on his back.

“I have worked to clean your mess. I have worked to continue the lessons that you insist on repeating. You, now, will work.”

Will turns his head to him, shifts to stretch himself comfortably on the bed and rest on his stomach, a bare wince at the stretch in his sore skin but no sound. He curls his arms under his chin and watches Hannibal, takes in the man lying in his bed. Someone so used to silk sheets and cotton of a thread count that is beyond compare, reclining in Will’s bed, in his apartment, hard and beautiful, like a god, like one of the philosophers whose words Will had borrowed.

He licks his lips.

Slowly, he pushes himself to all fours again, crawls until he’s close to Hannibal, until he can bring one leg over his hips and straddle him properly, lowering his body to rock against him, gasping in pleasure as their cocks rub together in delicious warm friction.

He brings one hand down to stroke Hannibal, to feel him twitch in his grip, eyes always on his, watch that strange light fill eyes that should be voids but are anything but. Will leans in to kiss him before he can think better of it, and it’s hungry and needy and entirely submissive.

His skin throbs. His heart hammers.

Will guides Hannibal against himself and just rubs there, against his hole, between the cheeks, until the other grasps him and he makes a pained sound at how the abused skin is stretched by impatient fingers.

Hannibal holds him still, in heavy-lidded observation of the flush in Will’s cheeks, the desire that unfurls his lips with quiet little noises that each stir as though they were touch along Hannibal’s skin. He wets his lips, a flicker of tongue, and watches Will’s thin fingers move expertly against his cock.

“You have ached for me,” Hannibal intones softly, half-question, half-statement. He leans up, a pull tightening his stomach to draw him off the bed and against Will. He kisses him soundly, fiercely, driving their mouths together with a need as acute as Will’s own to be near this boy, pressed chest-to-chest with him, inside of him, pushing up in a slow roll of hips.

Will’s lips part in a breath, a gasp, nerves raw from being fucked, licked, spanked, left wanting and waiting and Hannibal’s mouth closes against his lips again to steal the sound that leaves him.

“Exquisite boy,” Hannibal murmurs, the same tone as he’s used to debase him throughout the night, and kisses open-mouthed against the boy’s neck before he lays back to watch Will astride him.

Will swallows, thighs trembling from keeping himself up, keeping the raw skin from taking weight against Hannibal’s legs. He clenches his muscles, pushes up, lips parting as slowly as he moves, eyes closing as he sinks back down, another groan escaping him at the feeling. 

He rests his hands just below Hannibal’s ribs, balancing himself and levering at just the right angle for it to feel exquisite for them both. For a few moments, he moves slowly, is allowed to, before hands settle against his thighs and Will spreads them wider and starts to roll his hips in earnest.

One circle, another, one way, another, lip between his teeth and breath leaving him in pants as his cheeks stay red and his body shivers. His cock presses against his stomach, pulls back as Will moves, a thin line of fluid connecting skin with skin before it snaps, disappears, and Will moans.

A dark-eyed observation from beneath him, every movement shift breath moan taken in, memorized, studied, scrutinized. A fascination with watching the boy work his body towards Hannibal’s pleasure, towards his own, with lithe twists of hips and quaking sounds.

Hannibal’s hands spread against the boy’s parted thighs, through the fine hairs there until he trails a finger through the slick trail on his stomach, following it down the length of his cock, and sweeping across the glistening tip of it. 

He tastes it.

Tastes Will.

And he does not find him wanting.

“Recite for me, Will.”

Will’s lips part wider, tilt, and he opens his eyes just enough to see Hannibal below him as he continues the delicious pace, his muscles singing in pain from the effort, from exhaustion, the stretch of Hannibal, twice, and the bastard before him. He licks his lips and groans softly.

He begins where he remembers ending, before his voice was stolen away by pleas and gasps and warm, rough hands.

His voice pours from him, a desperate tinge beneath that adds a depth that hadn’t been there before, perhaps had never been intended before. And Will leans down to rest over Hannibal as he continues to fuck him languidly, pressing the words to his skin, to his throat, to the hair against his chest that he drags his nails through and tugs.

He speaks until he bends far enough and his voice is stolen by another moan, another stutter in the conversation recitation.

Another very gentle, very quiet curse in pleasure.

It is one of the loveliest moments that Hannibal remembers experiencing, his extraordinary boy rocking slow to please to him after withstanding so much cruelty, purring Plato’s discourses in ancient Greek against his skin. The clap of his hand striking sudden and sharp across Will’s cheek merely adds to it, darkening the blush blooming on his skin already.

The whimper and the wide-eyed stare that follows illuminates the moment that much more, and when after a few moments Will begins to roll his hips again, Hannibal allows a sigh of unmistakable satisfaction.

“Begin again,” breathes Hannibal, pushing his fingers through the boy’s hair to draw him near and kiss him, to seek the blood that earlier seeped into his mouth with his tongue and release him only to hear his words again.

Voice wavering and steadying in turn, although the cadence beneath his tone remains admirably, stunningly steady, Will shaking leans low against Hannibal again to whisper words of beauty into his ear and draw from Hannibal another soft sigh. Hannibal’s hands skim lightly over the boy’s thighs, to caress his hips and finally to rest on the curve of his ass.

Will hisses on a word, lips drawing back to reveal his teeth pressing hard together, his eyes closed, and he breathes out another moan, soft, before resuming, eyes opening to watch Hannibal beneath him, his entire body aching for release, his cock rubbing slick between them.

He sighs, a pleased noise, then his smile widens to be truly wicked, and he squeezes his muscles hard before starting a faster rhythm, drawing his fingers through Hannibal’s hair to tilt his head back, to whisper the words - voice hitching - against his ear until the hands around him tighten in turn as well, squeeze hard over red skin, and Will curses loudly. His eyes close, but he smiles when he’s struck again, turning his head the way the blow moves him before moaning and turning back to kiss Hannibal again.

“Let me cum?” he begs.

Hannibal rolls his hips up now against the boy, thighs contacting the marks left across Will’s ass every time he buries himself inside of him. He pushes his fingers, stinging from the slap, through the boy’s hair to feel it soft between his fingers and to stretch it increments until the curls are nearly straight in his hand. Stealing Will’s breath, his words, his moans, his weak little pained noises that stir the predator in Hannibal to destroy this marvelous creature astride him and to see the luminous brilliance of his eyes snuffed into nothingness.

He knows that he yet could, and Hannibal groans low against the boy’s mouth, an animal sound, before he grips the boy’s leaking cock in his hand, pulling long, slow strokes.

“You may,” Hannibal manages in a coarse whisper, his voice harshened, “and you will lap it from my skin when you are done.”

Will just moans, head ducked against Hannibal's collarbone, hands curled one in the sheets one over his chest, as his orgasm overcomes him, sends his body shuddering, his breathing catching and uneven.

His lips are parted wide over Hannibal's skin, slack in pleasure and exhaustion. When he feels Hannibal pull him harsher to him, he goes with a whimper, curls to Hannibal as he feels heat pulse into him.

He nearly sobs when he's let free, eyes closed and heart like a trapped creature in panic. He hasn't felt so sated in days.

Obediently, he slinks down Hannibal's body, eyes up as he draws the tip of his tongue through the mess against him, curling to show Hannibal, to let it drip to his bottom lip, before swallowing what stayed cupped in his tongue.

Strong hands wrap around Will’s arms to pull him upward, to lay against Hannibal’s chest, legs still parted on either side of his hips. He kisses the boy, lingering long, tasting the trace of cum still clinging to his mouth. Hannibal does not resist as Will nuzzles beneath his chin, tucks his head there and curls fingers against his chest, catlike and softened, finally, from his frenzy after enough abuse to leave Hannibal equally exhausted.

Equally sated. A god, perhaps, but one who has been left pleased, rumbling soft as he twines his fingers through Will’s hair.

“Messy boy,” Hannibal scolds him softly.

Will just grins against him, sticky, dirty, tired and utterly unwilling to move from how he’s entirely covering the man with his body.

Four days. Four bloody days, and Will feels like he can finally sleep again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is going on a brief hiatus till SUNDAY JULY 6TH as real life catches up with both writers for a bit.
> 
> Do you have any ideas for what else you'd like to see? Let us know! It might make the cut if characterization allows for it :3


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“The best chess masters,” Will says softly, “play the game not to win but to make sure that their opponent cannot.”_
> 
> Will shows his hand.
> 
> Disclaimer: although the beliefs of our characters were written by us, they are not necessarily shared. We don't condone, nor do we ourselves, kinkshame, but it happens in here. We're sorry! Be prepared.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Surprise early posting! To celebrate both of us placing in the Hannibalblogawards (blood first and whiskey third) and to thank you all so much for voting!

Hannibal isn't certain when it happened, but it strikes him as quaint to discover that he’s developed a favorite color.

All things in their place, of course, and all perception subjective, but he's unable to resist a sinuous twisting sensation in his stomach when he looks upon this particular shade. Without equal, though others may mimic it, they would be without the nuance, the indescribable glow that seems to light it from within.

He only just resists the urge to reach out and smother the bloom of warmth beneath his fingers, to feel it grow hotter still in the struggle and then perish and fade beneath his hand. Instead, Hannibal refills Will's glass in hopes that the cabernet will continue to feed the rosy blush flourishing across the boy's cheeks.

Lovely.

The boy arrived unexpected at his door, the copper corona of blood still lingering in the air around him as he stepped into the house. Hannibal noted without mention the set of the boy’s jaw, pouting irritation, and pressed his glass of wine into the boy’s fingers.

It vanished in a single swallow and was pushed back towards him before Will ducked to remove his boots.

“And how was your evening, Will?”

Amusement, now, as Will takes another long drink of wine, a blasphemy of domesticity that fills Hannibal with a perverse delight.

Will pauses, straightens, and unwinds the scarf from around his neck. The bruises sucked there are blotching purple now, with yellow in the middle and just rimming the edges, like a spill of balsamic vinegar Hannibal finds he desperately wants to lick and taste.

Apparently, Will assumes this is answer enough and takes another long drink to finish the glass.

It's yet early, perhaps 8 or 9 in the evening, a time neither usually see each other unless the intent had been to bring Will here initially. Usually, now, Will is hunting, or Hannibal is, an odd routine both keep to, and, evidently, one both have broken today.

"I could drink that entire damned bottle," Will says, voice slightly roughened already - he's found that 'damn' doesn’t fall into Hannibal's list of unapproved foul language and has taken to using it to almost goad the man into trying harder for harsher - and not yet warmed by a smile. "If you're offering."

Hannibal surrounds the boy, closing in behind him to undo the buttons on his coat. He ducks his head to nuzzle into Will’s hair, tilting the boy’s head to the side with the movement, and draws a deep breath. To smell, to claim the traces of his evening, blood and sweat and semen and spit, and beneath that only Will’s particular sweetness - youth, beauty, like leaves unfurling in spring despite the boy’s walking state of ruination that lingers like decay beneath it. An animalistic gesture, scenting him in such a way, greedy and possessive.

He slides the coat back from Will’s shoulders and hangs it neatly for him.

“You could,” Hannibal agrees, passing a hand softly across the boy’s throat before he steps away again. “Or we could find something stronger, if it suits your mood.”

Will's lips twitch, tilt in the beginnings of a smile and he rolls his shoulders when Hannibal steps away. Something familiar and disturbingly comforting about being reclaimed, even with a soft gesture like that. He knows that more than anything Hannibal wants to suck over the bruises and make those his own as well.

"I'm in a mood to play,” he replies, an acceptance without outright accepting, and he follows Hannibal to the kitchen, through it, to the main area of the house where he has a fire going.

It's pleasant, comfortable, and Will stretches his arms over his head as he watches Hannibal move around his space, commanding it with no effort, simply by being within it.

Will licks his lips.

"My evening," he answers, finally, drawling the words in a lazy, near-petulant way, "was successful in the sense that the man who had taken me, living, has now left me, dead." He draws a hand through his hair with a groan, "and has left me thoroughly unsatisfied."

He takes whatever Hannibal offers him. The alcohol smells expensive, has a beautiful warm color that sets Will’s body to shivering pleasantly as he connects the way the light touches it with the color Hannibal's eyes take on in the very early morning.

Hannibal smiles faintly as Will sips the costly bourbon - sweet on the tongue, with a slow-burning heat - well worth watching the lavish liquor vanish so quickly for the sight of Will’s tongue pressing softly to his lips to chase the taste of it.

He tops off his glass again before pouring one for himself.

The boy drapes himself across the sofa in front of the fire and Hannibal stands near him, not settling alongside but remaining near enough to watch him, to see the shifts and stretches that lengthen his limbs to ease the aches and pains of his night.

Hannibal’s hand settles in his hair to loop his fingers through the curls. “His death was not satisfaction enough?”

Will hums, tilts his head to the soft hand, brings the glass to his lips but sipping slower this time.

"He is dead and the better for it,” he mutters, eyes down to the drink before swirling it and setting the glass against his knee.

"If you only knew," Will laments, grinning, "how those blind idiots perceive seduction..."

Suddenly, he laughs, a brief warm sound, glances up and laughs again. 

"It's humiliating for them and a test in patience for me."

The sound of the boy’s laugh, bright and sweet, snarls tighter the winding tension in Hannibal, stirs his blood hotter beneath his skin.

“I could not begin to imagine,” he responds idly before taking a slow sip, letting the flavor burn slow across his tongue. “Tell me of this one, then, having so freshly drawn your ire.”

Hannibal settles against the arm of the couch, and readies to hear himself described in what Will imagines will be an act of cleverness, to levy thinly-veiled disdain at Hannibal until, whiskey spilling, Hannibal drags him across the floor by his hair and forces him to lap it up from the carpet.

A faint smile appears before Will even begins to speak.

Will hums, licks his lips and watches Hannibal settle. He remembers fearing the worst of this man once, too. Fearing stumbled words and awkward apologies, feared the preening over wealth and a cock the size of his little finger to compensate. 

How few important things he feared.

He sits back, sets his feet deliberately on the couch, one, then the other, watching Hannibal’s eyes linger, displeased. Then he stretches out, the glass against his chest barely supported by his long fingers.

"' _Oh, baby, you're just begging for it with those lips_ ,'" Will licks them now, grins, "' _Let_ daddy _take you home and teach you how to use them. Please._ "

Will scoffs.

"The only lessons I am interested in are not taught by 'daddy'." He bites the rim of the glass and gives Hannibal a look from under his hair.

Their eyes meet for a moment, and Hannibal lets the curls of hair go long enough to slap hard across the top of Will’s thighs to knock his feet to the floor. The gentle amusement doesn’t falter as he does so, no change in expression at all as he returns his hand to the boy’s hair. He grasps a little firmer now, tugging softly.

“Freud would be delighted,” he considers. “It seems a rather banal fetish to be driven by, in truth. Incest fantasies are such an ordinary taboo.”

A pause, and with a derisive snort, Hannibal echoes, “‘Baby’.” Another sip of bourbon, fingers skimming along Will’s neck to trace the circles of suck marks bruised there.

Will's lips press together and he imitates Hannibal by taking a sip as well.

"Lazy psychiatry, Dr. Lecte,” he purrs. "Freud holds no medical or psychological grounding anymore, in any civilized discussion. Perhaps next you'll be using the term 'sociopath' to describe my tendencies."

His mouth opens in a grin, white teeth barely visible beneath his lips.

"Archaic." He clicks the word, enjoys the way the fingers tighten in his hair and arches up against it. 

"It is so very dull, though," he sighs, harsh words away, "playing daddy's little boy the fourth time this month."

Hannibal releases the boy’s hair to take the bourbon up from the sideboard again. A note of warning in his tone, a promise of a response yet to come, unable to resist responding to the barb.

“Lazy listening, Will. I did not say I subscribe to his theories.”

He otherwise lets it pass for now, to be dealt with later in the evening, and refills the boy’s glass more full than strictly necessary. He sets the bottle by the couch as he settles into it now, as Will’s body language turns towards him - perhaps deliberately, perhaps not.

“Show me,” Hannibal suggests, devoid of lust or desire for anything other than for the boy’s particular skills to entertain him.

Will gives his drink a long side glance and licks his lips before taking another deliberate sip. It’s warming his body faster than wine, predictably, and he lets it, oddly trusting in this house, in this situation, with this man who could, at any moment, kill him.

He considers, amuses himself with the memories of the night he had only an hour before left, eyes rolling and head shaking in boredom, and how now, Hannibal wants him to put on the show again.

At least here, he knows, the end result will be worthwhile.

He holds the alcohol in his mouth a moment longer before swallowing, feeling it burn behind his teeth, under his tongue… adjusts the mental image of who he is in this scene, why he’s here, and when he laughs this time the sound is much younger, more a giggle than a chuckle, and he stretches his legs out in front of him before curling them up against his chest.

“I don’t think I’m old enough to drink yet.” He turns wide, blue eyes to Hannibal. “It’s making me feel funny.”

The transition is effortless and unforced, no hyperbole in performance but minute adjustments made to exaggerate his existing qualities. Nervousness in the curled posture, looseness in his arms looped around his knees, an openness of expression guileless and bright that masks entirely the deviousness and impropriety that Hannibal knows so well.

A pale allusion to the decadence contained therein.

It’s no wonder his victims fall for him so readily.

With an equally adept shift, Hannibal asserts his own mask. A concern, inquisitive as a parent or teacher might be, gentleness in his voice and in the soft crinkles of at the corners of his eyes, and an honesty about him that’s anything but.

“Have you never?” Light tones. He takes a drink himself, easily burying the genuine amusement he feels in watching Will perform such absurdity so capably. “Another sip may ease the feeling,” he encourages.

Will watches him through his hair and shakes his head slowly, eyes still as wide, before bringing the glass to his lips and taking a very big sip, swallowing quickly and making a face.

“It’s bitter,” he laughs again, shakes his head and sets the glass down, leaning over Hannibal to do so, limbs splayed in childish uncaring. He tilts his head up when he’s still over his lap and grins.

“I bet yours isn’t bitter.”

The kiss is sloppy, appropriately inexperienced, and for just a moment it changes to the deliberate, demanding thing that is Will Graham. Then that fades when he pulls away, grinning.

“Nope,” he answers his own question. “And I still feel funny.”

Hannibal follows the boy’s movement, leaning nearer him as pulls away. He nuzzles beneath Will’s jaw, tasting the soft curve of his neck with a tender kiss, warm and affectionate. A hand lifts to work free a button, and then another, slowly down Will’s shirt, the gentleness and care in his movements as easily feigned as anything else.

“It’s a drink for big boys,” Hannibal murmurs, allowing his fingertips to follow Will’s collarbone, hesitant - shy, even - in the movement. They skirt lower, across his stomach, and he rubs a warm palm against it as though to sooth away a stomach ache.

“Tell daddy where you feel funny, Will.”

Coaxing. Kind. An undercurrent of pressure and manipulation beneath the warm surface.

Remarkably identical to the same sordid voices that purr against Will’s skin before he silences them forever.

Will’s eyes widen, the blush in his cheeks darkens to something quite truly remarkable and he bites his lip, shaking his head slowly, before taking Hannibal’s hand and pressing it lower on his belly.

“There,” he whispers, shifting and wriggling when he pushes the hand to slide lower still, eyes still on Hannibal’s, lip tight between his teeth.

“Down there,” he gasps quietly at the feeling of the warm palm against him and looks away, childish fear welling up against his eyes that he feigns at hiding.

“I think…” he turns back, scrambles into Hannibal’s lap and frames his face. And when he speaks again, his voice is back to its usual timbre, its usual low, purring warmth.

“I have a headache from having to act like I’m twelve, again. Would you really do that to me? You’re not even hard from it.”

His own hand seeks down, and he tilts his head, brows up at what he feels.

“Oh, Dr. Lecter, perhaps we should play daddy more often,” he laughs, teasing, delighted, and leans in to kiss him.

Hannibal’s hands are firm now, greedy as they slide along Will’s thighs to cup his ass and pull him nearer, to let the kiss linger heated, hungry, eminently grateful to feel Will return to him and to shed his own falsities for the only person who’s seen it happen, and lived longer than a moment after.

“You are scarcely past twelve as it stands,” Hannibal informs him, scoffing. He slides his hands up further beneath the loosened shirt, curling fingernails to drag back down alongside Will’s spine, and a genuine pleasure appears now as Will shivers for him.

“But no, perhaps not again. I find it difficult to imagine desiring anything so insipid, let alone with the knowledge, now, that you are fluent in Attic Greek.”

A quick tug to bring Will against him so that he can press his mouth against the sweep of Will’s collarbone, instead of fingers feigning fear. His teeth scrape softly, he sucks at pale skin, and his breath cools against it.

“Is that the worst of it, then? You feign emotion well enough.” One hand splays against Will’s back to keep him close, as the other continues unbuttoning his shirt to shuck it from his shoulders.

Will grins, pleased with himself, almost preening with the knowledge of his desirability even when it had never been, truly, pulled into question.

“The worst is the boredom,” he admits, rolling his hips against Hannibal, arching back into his hands, shivering at the touch of his nails against his skin. Nothing like the fumbling groping of earlier, the man determined to hold every inch of Will at once, apparently, to ‘worship’ everything that he was.

Will thinks that Hannibal’s blows feel more worshipful than that idiot’s damp fingers had.

“The banter, the awkwardness.” He rolls his shoulders as the shirt is slid from them, makes no move to undo his cuffs to pull the sleeves off as well, just ducks his head against Hannibal’s hair and sighs.

“Most want to hurt me,” he continues, moving his hand over his own chest, up to the bruises fresh from this evening, pressing down against them until they pale and he hisses in mild discomfort.

“Something about… my mouth, I think,” he grins. “The filthy things I say. Though you are the only one who doesn’t script me to say them. You wait, patient, for them to slip free on their own and relish in the pain you give.”

Following the path of Will’s hand across his bare skin, up his hairless chest to force pain against himself with slender fingers pressing into blackened bruises, Hannibal settles his own hands against the movement of the boy’s hips.

“As do you,” he replies evenly. “You revel in my hands against you and it matters not if it is in kindness or in cruelty.”

As though in emphasis, he snares the boy by the throat, squeezing over the suck marks shadowed across his skin, tightening gradually beneath his jaw.

“It loses all the joy of surprise to know that you are acting insolent at my behest,” Hannibal speaks softly, pulling Will closer. “The pleasure is in never knowing when you will choose to start speaking in profanity instead of Plato, in violence instead of desire, and when I will get to feel your flesh split and part and swell and open beneath my hands.”

The words pour black from his mouth against Will’s, matching the rhythm of the boy’s hips with his own and in expression of some boundless, malevolent hunger so great that it might consume light itself if so capable, Hannibal sinks his teeth into Will’s lower lip and tugs. Not enough to break skin, but only just resisting.

Will’s eyes close, just enough for only the barest blue to be visible, a line of light, and he holds his breath until his lungs scream with it. Then he smiles, exhales harsh against Hannibal's lips and kisses him properly.

He’s dizzy now, languid and quiet, heavy.

"Shall I surprise you with some foreign filth, then?" he murmurs, tilts his head, seeks the warmth of the man’s mouth again.

"You wouldn't know what to do with me." He bites his lip, brings a hand up to gently peel Hannibal’s fingers from him.

"What do you do?" he asks, arching his back, discarding his shirt to the floor. “With the boys you buy?"

He grins, grinds down harder with a pleased moan, before leaning close again.

"Show me."

Hannibal considers the request, with another shift upwards as Will presses down against him.

"In truth, the car, the clothes, the house are usually sufficient enough to bring thoughts of a comfortable life to their eyes," Hannibal admits. "Endeavoring, each, that they are clever or sweet enough to win themselves into it, to find their long search rewarded at last. They play coy at me, not the transparent innocence you would project but a naiveté. An openness. They ply their charms, their attempts at culture, and I allow it. I let them think to have surprised me."

In the instant that his words cease, Hannibal's arms surround Will. He pulls the boy closer to him, presses him to his chest not in an effort to possess or to smother but as warmly as though they had known each other for years. The kiss deepens but does not demand, a soft sound carries on Hannibal's sigh as they finally part.

His attentive gaze, dark-eyed as ever but warmer somehow despite the blackness of it, says more than his words might. Adoring, as he watches Will astride him and in the cautious assurance that presses his hands over every inch of the boy's body made available to him.

"I did not expect to find you out amongst the others," he finally says, a slight smile curved across his lips, brighter than the ones that Will has seen. It's enough, in its implication. An elevation of the boy to something greater than his peers, than the work he does that brought them together.

Kisses are pressed in worship to the boy's bare chest, lingering above his heart in particular to feel it beat faster beneath his lips.

"I have had others," a confession, a quiet shame in the admission. "But for all of the exquisite things with which I have attempted to surround myself, very little has satisfied me. It is empty here. I have been without."

A sigh drawn from his lips, unexpected, as his dark eyes turn upward.

"You bring a life to this place."

Will blinks, wonders, for a moment, at the words, feels them coil and curl and warm against him, knows that he’s responding by the way his heart beats faster, the way his mind rushes quick with ideas and vignettes for the future. He smiles, draws fingers through Hannibal’s hair gently, tugging a little at the strands.

“Will you save me?” he asks, playing along, as Hannibal had for him, voice soft, seeking, desperately sweet in his desire for this permanence.

He is kissed in answer, a nearly desperate passion overtaking Hannibal at the words as he holds the boy against him. A lifeline, a rock, something to be clung to and cherished.

“I could not want for more,” he whispers, pressing tender kisses against the boy’s cheek. A hand pushes back through his hair, as though seeking to confirm that this boy - this one, above all others - is here with him now, the movement of his mouth and warm hands merely an echo of the devotion that brings their bodies together not in lust but in something more familiar, pieces that fit together as though intended.

Love, perhaps.

An extraordinary affectation.

He feels Will’s heart against his chest beating harder not in fear, panic, desire, arousal but in response to the reverence pressed against his skin, and when the boy’s mouth falls gently open for him to sigh with the weight of it, it stops.

Ceases as though all the air in the room and inside his lungs has been drawn into a vacuum.

Cold. Distant. Devoid of light or heat.

“Other boys think themselves too clever,” Hannibal intones against Will’s ear. “Too street-smart, too wise to be lured in by false promises they’ve heard before, too jaded to be drawn to the place or the things within it. They require a firmer hand.”

The fingers that had moments before run through Will’s curls in sacrament now tighten. Not as harshly as he normally snares Will, but an echo of it, restrained.

“They do not seek empty declarations of power but respond instead to the thing itself, a degree of experience,” he continues. “A disinterest in their reality or their story but a transaction, instead, that may prove pleasurable enough for them to enjoy their time here before departing.”

Hannibal bends Will into a gentle curve, kissing roughly now down his chest to find sensitive spots - teeth catch a nipple, tongue passing over it immediately after - but he rocks against Will now to make his expectations known.

A functional thing, this, without false affections.

“You were one of those boys,” Hannibal muses.

Will hums, arching as he’s bent, remembering well how Hannibal had tried none of the affection, none of the gentleness and coaxing… he remembers cleaning ash from the carpet with his tongue, eyes up and knowing, sensing, that had he not smiled more ash would follow. His fingers tighten in Hannibal’s hair in turn.

“Don’t I bring life to this place?” he asks innocently. “Aren’t I the one you’ve been looking for?”

He’s goading, pushing, feeling the way the alcohol tickles his blood through his veins, sends his balance haywire, his inhibitions aside.

He curves, ducks his head and presses his hips closer, just as needy, just as demanding.

“How did it feel having your own game played on you?” he asks softly.

Hannibal makes a sound that could almost be a laugh, brows lifting as the boy gyrates against him, friction heating where his arousal presses to Hannibal’s own.

“Dear Will,” breathes Hannibal, a patient sigh. “I seem to recall that it was you who were pinned to the ground. Whose neck I might have broken with scarcely more effort or concern than it took to open the bottle of bourbon you’ve been enjoying. To shut off the light inside of you,” he suggests, “or perhaps simply to paralyze and sustain our time together for a little longer without quite so much a fight from you.”

A fond memory, this, the sensation of leather wrapping tight around his neck, of Will’s knee driving hard against the inside of his thigh, of the breathless fury and panic that sent the boy into fight and flight simultaneously.

“I had thought originally to strangle you, to feel the rhythm of your body build faster in tempo until it reached a climax and ceased,” he offers, with an amused pause. “I am certain I too would have found a climax of my own, when you shuddered and fell soft around me.”

Rough fingers pull free the fly of Will’s jeans, to grasp him and stroke in steady, hard pulls along the length of his cock. The hand in Will’s hair brings the boy’s mouth to his throat, sighing as he moans against it.

“How did you intend to win your game, Will?”

WIll makes another sound, soft, pleased, utterly submissive but in his own right, nothing false, nothing faked, not now.

He relishes in the touches, the gentleness where he has grown to expect violence, the power he can feel against him that is vibrating to burst free, a creature just waiting to tear its skin and show its true face.

He wonders how heavy Hannibal’s mask feels, how he would look if Will peeled it away. If he would be able to bear its weight.

“The best chess masters,” he starts softly, “play the game not to win but to make sure that their opponent cannot.”

He licks his lips, draws sharp nails through Hannibal’s hair, down his neck, over his spine.

“Zugzwang,” he murmurs. “Where the best move is to not move at all. Checkmate is final, but this.”

He gasps, arches harder against the hand on him, turns to bring his teeth harsh to Hannibal’s neck.

“This is purgatory. Endless and inescapable.”

He laughs, that pleased, delicious thing that he can feel brings shivers to Hannibal’s hands. A restrained desire to move, held muzzled.

“I would win by setting you up to never move again, Hannibal,” he purrs.

There is truth in this, a play that Hannibal had not anticipated. It sits heavy against his chest, as heavy as the boy who leans to devour Hannibal’s silent surprise with soft lips and a clever tongue. A succubus smothering the breath from him.

It might have been the first time that Hannibal’s words rang true, had he spoken them to this boy and not the ones that came before him. He did not expect to find him amongst the others.

“Forcing a stalemate,” speaks Hannibal, and even as he says it he feels trapped. Drawn further in fascination than he had ever intended, fixated on this boy - this Will Graham that sits astride him laughing sweetly in spite of every act of violence Hannibal has visited upon him.

A surge of smothering blackness welling fast in Hannibal’s veins, thick as an oil spill and spreading slick through his body. It sings for him to strike, to grab, to twist and snap, to tear the boy to pieces and free himself of the game in which he’s found himself ensconced.

To declare a win by turning over the table and spilling all the pieces to the floor, as he does to Will now, with squeezing hands digging into the back of his knees to lift him and to drop him roughly back from his lap to the ground.

Hannibal is on the boy, between his thighs, before he’s hardly had time to register the new position, bourbon thrumming hot and dizzying through him. The pulsing of liquor that draws an aching moan from the boy is unabated by Hannibal’s mouth shoved hard to his, worsened by the hands that yank his jeans down his thighs, off, discarding them before Hannibal moves to his own, to tug them low enough to bare himself.

The instruction is simple, curt. Brutal, even, compared to Hannibal's eloquence mere minutes before. A vile need to feel himself asserted over the boy, despite knowing that in doing so, he’s giving the boy exactly what he wants.

“Suck.”

Insufferable boy. Beautiful, brilliant, insufferable boy.

Will’s eyelids flicker, just barely, just enough, and his lips twitch, tilt, before - miraculously - he obeys. Bowing his head, curving his shoulders to bend forward and part his lips around Hannibal's cock.

He moans softly at the fingers that instantly tighten in his hair, hold him still, his own hands come up to rest against the man’s thighs, to ground himself with this. Hannibal’s hand twists, pulls sharp pain through Will’s scalp, down his spine, through his groin. It drives him further, closer, until he chokes, and pulls back.

He isn't allowed off, not fully, but enough to savor it, the bitterness against his tongue, the weight there, full and hard, the undeniable panic the man feels, hearing truth in Will’s words. And Will feels powerful, he feels so powerful.

His jaw aches, the angle not helping the pain, the fingers near-tearing him apart in their desperation to debase Will with this, to put him in his place.

The unexpected boy. The one bringing life to Hannibal’s existence. 

He makes a faint sound of displeasure and is rewarded with a roll of hips, cock driven deeper, Will’s own grown harder between his legs.

It's little satisfaction, as suspected, to force the boy to perform what he does so readily, what he would if asked rather than thrown and snared and manhandled.

Still, Hannibal's hips rock against the boy's mouth, to feel his tongue twist and press, to feel the back of his throat shudder when grazed, to see his lips curve damp and pull in little sucking movements filled with whimpering noises soft and sweet despite the rough treatment.

He is not trapped, Hannibal tells himself. It is his choice that finds him here in the thrall of an impudent and clever boy called Will. His choice alone that is the reason the boy has not yet been quartered for parts and consumed.

A Greek dish, perhaps, when the time is right. But what meal would be sufficient enough to honor this rare creature, unlike all others and so much like himself? There would not ever be another like him, once spent, and the thought draws all pleasure from the considerations of how to cook him.

He pulls the boy free of his cock, hooking fingers beneath his chin to draw him upwards. Hannibal settles back against the couch, on the floor now as they so often find themselves, and pulls Will into his lap. He presses their arousals together, rough friction as they grind against the other.

Kissing him open-mouthed and hungry, some element of Hannibal's earlier performance carrying over into the movement of his hand through Will's hair, into the curl of fingers tracing the bend of the boy's back.

Perhaps it is the bourbon that causes him to say it. Perhaps the boy's own inebriation that he hopes will wipe it from his mind, forgotten when he wakes hungover and aching in the morning. Perhaps a mockery of tenderness. Perhaps not.

"I have never met another such as you," Hannibal murmurs softly, a predatorial wariness with claws unsheathed but not yet ready to rend.

Will makes a noise, another of those soft, sweet things that he doesn’t seem able to control anymore, regardless of how hard he tries - or perhaps because he no longer tries.

"I know."

It's honest, not prideful for just a moment as he allows himself to be consumed by this, by the sensations and feeling, by the man who Will had missed when he had gone away, by the man who he enjoys and refrains from killing.

Another kiss, just as desperate, just as sloppy, Will’s hands up over Hannibal’s shoulders, fingers drawing harsh nail marks over the leather he hopes don't fade, and at the same time doesn’t care. He falls into him, matches his heartbeat, matches the stuttered breathing and the aching need to get off.

His head spins, his entire body feels light, and Will laughs, just softly, just once, against Hannibal’s lips before his orgasm takes him, surprising and satisfying, hot between them into Hannibal's hand.

Hannibal, greedy, takes the sound from Will before he can stop himself, mouth closing over his again and again to feel the laugh like sunlight against him. A genuine delight in the sensation, rather than an act put on for another’s ego. A humanity in Will yet unconsumed, cheeks flushed and eyes bright, a stark contrast to the snarls that typically tear themselves from Hannibal when he climaxes, a savage sound made as though in resentment for his own weakness.

Resentment for the boy’s ability to feel so acutely pleased, and so simply.

Resentment for his own inability to do the same.

And so he consumes what he can, what the boy yields so openly to him, squeezing gently up against the head of his cock to drag out his climax and feel it drip hot over his fingers. He watches as the laugh shivers into a grin instead, sleepy and content, and Will rocks his hips still against Hannibal’s hand.

Content to press against Will in turn, still achingly hard from his own climax yet unreached, and with curiosity Hannibal brings his sticky hand to his mouth to taste the boy there. The intensity of information, of flavors and experiences that play across his palette forces him to draw a breath, before he brings his mouth to Will’s neck, laid dark with bruises. He kisses slowly at first, and then harder, sucking the sensitive skin to leave his own marks over it.

He seems at ease to claim nothing more than this, not even his own release, to instead immerse himself in the boy astride him.

Will feels heavy, limbs comfortable and splayed where they are; hands over the couch, thighs spread, contented to be utterly bare when Hannibal is fully dressed.

He tilts his head to the side, relishes in the sting of more bruises, shivers when he gets too sensitive to keep rubbing up against Hannibal’s cock.

The alcohol still slips warmly beneath his skin, a sluggish pour that has his smile languid and his body lazy. Here, now, the power he had exerted over Hannibal has vanished, here he's just Will Graham, seventeen, tired and tipsy and very, very pleased.

"Take me to bed?" he murmurs, hands curling closer to stroke Hannibal's hair.

A hum, before Hannibal moves the boy’s weight from his lap enough to stand. He sighs when the boy’s arms tighten just a little firmer around his neck, and with a few shifts of movement finally stands and hoists the boy against him. Mess smears against Will’s thighs as he wraps his legs around Hannibal’s hips, and the older man spreads his palms to keep the boy pressed against him.

“Lazy boy,” he chastens softly as he makes his way up the stairs, another sigh when Will forces his head beneath Hannibal’s chin in a warm nuzzle that makes it that much more precarious to carry him in this way.

Finally, Will is deposited on the bed, and Hannibal regards the sticky stains on his waistcoat with dismay.

He starts to undress, the same meditative process it always is when he’s in control of it, and he glances back over his shoulder to the boy stretching catlike and content across his sheets.

“Beside the bed,” Hannibal instructs, “in the drawer there. Make yourself ready.”

Will groans, not in any discontent but from the pleasure of feeling his muscles stretch. He takes his time obeying, though, twisting on the bed and relishing the sheets that claim his warmth and return it to him.

Then he does reach, and take the tube of lubricant from the drawer indicated.

He’s tired, pleased to be in bed, but when he spreads his legs his knees draw up high, fingers seek and find his hole still reddened from his activities earlier that evening and push in.

Will is never quiet in his pleasure, but alcohol takes away the shutter usually drawn over the soft breathless little sounds he makes when he’s so pliant.

He prepares himself slowly, two fingers and languid stretching before he adds a third, opens his eyes to watch Hannibal before biting his lip and pushing further still to add a fourth.

Hannibal pauses in disrobing to observe the movement of the boy’s hips twisting sinuous against his own fingers, opening himself wide with aching little sounds to accompany.

As fascinating to watch in his pleasure as in pain.

The sleepy ease settled into Will piques a curiosity in Hannibal, as he hangs his shirt, and ducks to remove his socks and their stays.

“How many years, Will, have you done this?”

Will sighs, removes two fingers to keep himself tight for this, tight enough to feel good. He considers the question only barely, before answering.

"I've always been bored," he says, words soft but utterly honest, no careful masking in that tone, not now.

"I turned my first trick at fifteen, just before I finished school.” He grins, as though remembering a particularly good moment. "I didn’t kill that one."

He turns his head against the pillows when his fingers brush his prostate, gasps, and the next words are almost lost to Hannibal in their softness.

"He was gentle when he took my virginity."

Almost lost, but not quite, as Hannibal’s fingers pause above the button of his trousers.

They continue a moment later, removing the slacks to hang them neatly over a wooden hanger.

“Lucky,” Hannibal echoes, from a conversation that seems long ago at this point. “Considering the nature of attention you’ve drawn subsequent,” he adds, with faint amusement.

It lingers as he turns towards the bed, unclothed and still as hard as before, to skim a hand across the boy’s stomach and watch his fingers disappear in slow presses inside himself.

“And your parents? I imagine you hid it well from them.”

Breath leaves Will in a shaking sigh and he bites his lip, stretching and arching against the sheets.

"Easy to hide when no one's around," Will scoffs quietly.

Good grades and the veneer of a typical good student, it was enough for his father to believe Will was fine, that he needed nothing more than the occasional encouragement and payment for college.

Will got a scholarship to college.

And his mother was never in the picture to care or not, either way.

Hannibal makes an acknowledging sound as he rubs slow from the boy’s chest to his belly and back again, feeling him curve beneath the warm touch.

Imagining Will even younger than now, equally clever and bored senseless by lessons that presumed to drill in him things he already knew or could absorb far faster than other students. Alone at home, driven to anxiety with restlessness for new experiences to stimulate him. It only so happened that he found that stimulation in a sordid place, in risky sex with older men whose control he could wield with scarcely an effort beyond appearing as charming as he already knew himself to be.

And it only so happened that this stimulation, too, proved to be in time insufficient.

“And your first kill?”

Hannibal settles into the bed beside the boy, slicking his fingers with lube before he tugs aside Will’s leg to move between his thighs. He withdraws the boy’s fingers from himself and replaces them with his own, pressing deep inside him and curling firmly.

A weak little keen, Will’s cheeks flushed dark again in his pleasure, cock stirring in interest against his thigh as Hannibal holds him open, wide, and takes his time.

His fingers are thicker, rougher. Will makes another sweet little moan and arches his neck, head back.

"Sloppy," he gasps, fingers curling in the sheets, "messy..."

And then he laughs again, a full, warm sound before it's stolen by another gasp.

"An utter accident."

He's twisting now, writhing against the sheets, entire body pink with pleasure and heat. He remembers how tight that belt had felt around his neck, how harsh against his thighs just moments before, how hard he'd fought and finally managed to scramble away, turn and press his thumbs into the man’s eyes in sheer desperation to live.

He'd cried, afterwards, from the pure exhilaration of it. Breathless, helpless sobs against the heels of his bloodied hands.

"Hannibal -"

The older man leans over him, to press his name from the boy’s mouth as he coats his cock in lube. A few soft strokes, and a sigh as he settles against him. A slow push, unhurried, to feel Will’s opening stretch further still around him. He pushes a hand against the back of Will’s knee to bend his hips higher, and kisses him again, traces still of the boy’s climax salty between their mouths.

“Tell me, Will,” Hannibal intones, once he’s buried his cock in the boy as far as he can go. He does not rush but waits for the boy’s body to relax back into the soft sheets, to let him adjust to the feeling of Hannibal so deep inside him, before starting to move.

“How did it make you feel?”

Will groans again, curling the leg not held, around Hannibal’s hips, heel against his lower back; entirely bent and manipulated out of shape and into another to fit the man’s whims, to fuel his own desire for fulfilment.

The words draw a knot in his chest, like a fist pushed too far, and he gasps, turns his head away and feels only Hannibal’s free hand caressing his face, stroking the curls up behind his ear so he can kiss the curve his neck makes. It’s painfully intimate, and something in Will tugs in warning, but he doesn’t listen, he doesn’t care.

He draws his own hands up against Hannibal’s back, then down, leaves one against his shoulder and brings the other to his own face, fingers splayed to cover it as he pushes down against every slow, languid thrust against him.

He drops his hand with a sigh, and for a moment, he’s fifteen again, a throbbing pain against his thighs from freshly struck skin, between his legs from the cock that had so cruelly penetrated him, and his face is wet, fingers slipping over his cheeks and smearing red.

“I cried,” he gasps, the word breaking as Hannibal finds his prostate and slows, to deliberately draw the head of his cock over it again and again until Will sobs in earnest.

“I had never felt so alive, I had the man’s blood down my arms, across my face, I could taste him…”

Will groans, drops both hands up behind himself to brace against the headboard, to curl his fingers there tight and arch to give himself over entirely - vulnerable in mind, in body, in every way Hannibal wanted him.

“I cried because it had worked,” he breathes, another sob of pleasure and he grins. “I was fifteen and it had fucken worked.”

At this, Hannibal’s smile curves a little higher and he presses a grinning kiss into the boy’s neck, moving up to nuzzle against his temple, to drag his mouth softly against the flush of the boy’s cheek.

Not a sociopath or a psychopath - defying any such mundane attempts to describe or classify, no sad tedious story of how he struggled with his actions and his morality. Merely a pure and conscientious delight in his actions.

The sensation of connection is electric, and Hannibal groans low against Will’s bruised throat. He considers, grasping the boy’s cock to stroke him, the unlikelihood of there ever existing in the world another one so much like himself, let alone to have found him on a street corner and joined so immediately in their shared interest.

A stalemate as a mutual victory, perhaps, rather than a mutual ensnarement.

His hand slides from Will’s knee to press over one of his hands instead, to let the boy slide both legs around him and tie their hips together again and again, harder and harder. He abandons Will’s cock to slap hard across the back of his thigh for the muttered curse, heat coiling tighter in Hannibal’s stomach as the crack of skin on skin resonates in his ears over the hum of his pulse.

“You must be exquisite when you are in your frenzy,” Hannibal growls low against his ear, fucking into him without reservation now, not to dominate and to wound but to meet some need deeper than that - to realize the intensity of feeling in physical form.

Will groans again, an animal sound of need, and ducks his head before dropping it back, feeling Hannibal’s lips brush his skin, then his teeth snare against the earlobe and pull it. His own teeth are gritted, body aching in the most perfect way as he is driven closer and closer to something like enlightenment.

The sharp sting against his skin sends his heart hammering, his eyes wide and pupils filling the blue around them. He has no words left, nothing to tell Hannibal nothing that matters, if any of it matters.

But the drive, the connection, the closeness of the two of them like this, entwined, one the tail one the mouth of the snake that goes on never ending.

He wonders how drunk he really is and he wonders why it matters.

“Harder,” he gasps, and it unfolds into a mantra, into a pulse of words breathed then just implied, with his hands twisting as though restrained, his hips pushing up for every brutal thrust that sends stars behind his eyes and adrenaline through his system.

Words and words and words, over and over, until Hannibal stills, a growl so deep Will feels it echo in his bones, and Will follows after, blessed cool release that sends shivers through him, a cry from him, and then something close to ecstasy keeping him entirely pinned, flat, heavy, to the bed under the killer above him.

Will drops his hands, drapes them, cool, over Hannibal’s shoulders and tugs his hair just enough to bring their mouths close, lips just brushing. He smiles, utterly used up, exhausted, languid, and draws the tip of his tongue over Hannibal’s top lip before dropping back against the pillows with a sigh.

Hannibal sucks a breath through his teeth as he pulls slowly from Will, eyes heavy-lidded but focused entirely on the boy beneath him. Exhausted, pliant, gentled by the exertions and expositions shared between them, he watches with fascination as Will’s eyes drift closed, lashes fluttering soft against flushed cheeks. Submissive in being so sated, entirely open to Hannibal and anything he might do to him, or not.

He hums quietly, too tired now to think in poetry about this strange symmetry between them, and turns onto his side. His arms are warm, encompassing as he pulls Will back against him, to loop limbs over him and twine together with him.

No more words now, nothing more to say that isn’t known with increased clarity each time they find themselves in such a way. Hannibal buries his nose into the boy’s hair, curled with sweat, and breathes him in, content in the assurance that while he may not know yet the dish to pair with a delicacy such as Will, there is ample time to yet discern it.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Hannibal’s fingers tighten around his glass - his jaw works, once, in terse allowance for the strain he feels cracking through his ribs, snapping each one free until his lungs fill with blood and darkness pours from him like a flood of retribution._
> 
> _Chianti is a fine pairing for jealousy, he considers._
> 
>  WARNINGS FOR THIS CHAPTER: very underage, very dubcon, violence, prostitution, filming of minors without permission, voyeurism, I suppose, in a way, sex with two people at once.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the amazing [pugbug73](http://pugbug73.tumblr.com/), who requested a Hannigram sextape. Well... this is close, right? We hope you like it, bb, and if not, then we shall write you another!

“I brought you a gift.”

Will’s in a thicker sweater today, visible beneath the coat he wears. Still in those insufferable yet utterly delicious jeans that press right up against his skin, still in those combat boots that never seem to lace.

Will grins, brings a thin plastic package to his lips and gently bites it. It looks like a normal case for a CD or a DVD, one that one could find in any store for simple storage where they didn’t want a box. For sending, perhaps, or just to save space. Within, a disk gleams with purple tones.

Then Will takes the thing away, pushes it into his pocket.

“I would recommend chianti for this one, Hannibal,” he says casually, stepping past the threshold despite Hannibal not stepping aside for him, pressing close, thus, to his chest. “Something to bring out the deeper flavors of the palette.”

His smile is utterly wicked, teeth white beneath red lips, cheeks pink from the cold, the tip of his nose as well. Will looks younger, and the snow is slowly melting from his hair where he stands.

The boy’s burgeoning bravado pulls a noise from Hannibal as they stand so near together. For a moment, he considers sending the boy down to the basement to find the bottle that he, in his youthful pride, would suggest, locking the door behind him, and letting him see what else he may find.

He would find wine, certainly. Equipment of increasingly questionable necessity for a home like this. Parts of other boys so much like Will himself.

“As you insist,” Hannibal says simply in response, stepping aside to let the boy pass with a curious resistance to touching him yet. Wary, for a moment, of what Will intends to subject him to this evening, and how soon his otherwise quiet evening will be brought to blows laid against pale skin.

A faint smile at this, unseen, as Will ducks to remove his boots.

“I trust you’re capable of setting up whatever it is you wish to show me, as I find an appropriate vintage.”

Something young. Fresh. Sharp on the tongue in its newness.

Will just grins in answer, seeming to resist touching Hannibal just as surely as Hannibal resists touching him, for now.

With socked feet, he makes his way to the kitchen and through it, unwinding his scarf - apparently not a sweater, then, considering the tatty thing he has on beneath his coat, again - as he goes before casually dumping it over the back of one of the chairs in the dining room. It doesn’t slip to the floor, but it certainly doesn’t belong there.

Will finds what he seeks in the study, discovering that Hannibal apparently does not entertain company with films in the living area, but on a screen projector in his private space instead. If he ever entertains company here he doesn’t kill. Will assumes he does, someone so affluent, and in the circles he works.

By the time the man returns, Will has the small remote in his hand, the screen deceptively blank and black before them. His hips are cocked, one arm around his middle the other resting the elbow against that wrist, hand up and curled to support his chin. He looks, strangely, nostalgic.

He gives Hannibal a slow look as the man passes his field of vision and licks his lip into his mouth, just watching him. Then he straightens, sets the remote against the large oak desk, and takes up the glass offered in its stead.

The scarf is looped over Hannibal’s arm, as though Will had merely forgotten it and he intended to return it. He drapes it over the arm of the couch without mention as Will takes his glass. Will’s glass is filled a little higher than necessary, as is Hannibal’s own.

Curious and cautious in equal parts as to what depravity the boy has in mind, as surely it can be nothing else.

Hannibal seats himself, still far more staid and upright than the boy’s comfortable slouch, and glad he had forgone lingering yet in his suit to instead settle in to a button-down, sleeves folded, and a simple pair of slacks.

Barefoot, even, from having eased into the livingroom to research a particular recipe for rump roast, to enjoy the lingering remnants of one of Will’s former peers.

“What will we be watching tonight?”

Will says nothing, settles more comfortably on the couch with his feet drawn up after he’d gathered the remote and glass both. After a pause, he licks his lips and sets the disk running.

For a moment, there is nothing, just darkness and the strange static that comes with film or old vinyl records. Or sometimes just silence, in empty rooms with nothing but dust and energy. Then there’s a sound of shifting, plastic on plastic, and the darkness goes away, filled, instead, with a very awkward close up view of a man’s face.

He looks no older than 40, no beard, but a comfortably thick moustache, eyes a strange gray that seems to linger on blue but never quite make it, lips thin. Not a handsome man but far from horrific. He adjusts something on the camera and steps away, presenting, instead, a view of a bedroom.

A large bed, unmade but not messy, can be seen in the center of the shot, though there is suggestion that behind it is not a wall but perhaps something more, perhaps just a headboard and then a desk. It hardly matters, the bed is quite obviously what the man wants seen.

He glances between the camera and it over and over, as though trying to see an angle he had previously missed, before something catches his attention beyond the bedroom door and he removes himself from the shot.

Will can feel Hannibal’s eyes on him, curious yet willing to wait without explanation for the moment. He himself holds his glass tight, with both hands, and doesn’t drink from it.

“Come on up,” the man’s voice is off camera. “Make yourself at home. It’s warmer in here, at least.”

“Yea.” This voice, this one sounds familiar. Curled and gently higher in youth, a tone Hannibal has heard before, just once, directed at him during a night of comparisons and pleasures.

When Will walks into frame, he is younger, perhaps 16 here, perhaps even younger still. He takes in the room and bites his lip, pushing his hands into his pockets, allows his wide light eyes to follow his host when he too steps into frame.

“Thanks.”

Though the reason for Will to show this - curled on the couch as he is, fixated and distant all at once on the images playing from the projector - is still unclear, the intent of the video itself is clear enough.

A displeased sound, soft, as Hannibal takes another sip. He watches the boy on the screen, rather than the one next to him. Leaner, with spry limbs and a brightness to his eyes that isn’t entirely false.

Dorian Gray, becoming more beautiful in time’s reversal as his secret monstrosity grows.

Hannibal does not speak again, does not yet reach out to Will, but simply takes a longer drink and lets his fingers tap silently against the glass.

On the screen, Will’s eyes take in the room quickly. They don’t linger on the camera. It doesn’t appear that he knows it’s there at all.

“What’s your name?” the man asks, a gentle tone as he comes to stand in front of Will. He’s taller but not by much. Will’s shoulders hunch anyway, setting himself smaller, an easier target.

“Uh,” he licks his lips. “Will.”

“A pretty name for a pretty boy.”

On the couch, Will looks visibly disgusted, finally peels one hand away from the glass to allow his other to lift it to his lips. 

On screen, Will ducks his head on a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes.

“Thanks.”

“Lift your face, let me see those pretty eyes.”

Will does, a brief, brisk motion to flick his fringe from them but he obeys, readily and well, and the man steps closer to run a hand over Will’s cheek and down under his chin. His thumb caresses Will’s lips, tugging the bottom one down until Will’s mouth opens, his jaw slackening just a little to allow the motion.

“Mmm.” The hunger in the man’s expression is palpable, as is his cock in his pants, tenting the fabric before he brings his free hand to stroke himself.

“Will you get on your knees for me, like a good boy?”

On screen, Will swallows at the same time as the man sitting next to Hannibal on the couch. The glass returns to the side table empty. Will does not ask for it to be refilled.

A brief nod from the boy on screen, curls shifting with the motion. The man’s smile becomes wicked.

“Then on your knees,” he says.

Will goes, the only sound on the camera, for the moment, the shuffling of his jeans against the carpet, the sound of the man taking a step back to force Will to lean to reach him. When he takes out his cock, already hard and thick in his hand, Will swallows.

“Wrap your pretty lips around that, Will.”

“He never found a synonym for pretty,” Will utters next to Hannibal now, the last word nearly spat with annoyance, though he doesn’t seem at all triggered or affected by the video itself, and his words overrun those on the screen, so Hannibal can’t hear, perhaps deliberately.

“- for this,” is all that reaches him, though he can put together what it was that was said.

The younger boy looks, for a moment, genuinely worried, and so innocent. But there’s a tic in his jaw that gives away his utter indifference for the situation. Another act, a thin and gentle and very effective veil.

On screen, Will leans forward to take the cock in his mouth as it’s fed him, eyes up when he reaches the point he chokes at.

The clicking sound of Will’s throat, gagging on the man’s length, seems unusually pronounced to Hannibal. Exaggerated for effect, maybe, or perhaps it only seems so loud over the blood rushing louder and louder in Hannibal’s ears.

Another choke jerks the boy’s hunched shoulders as the man pushes in again, and it startles another soft sound from Hannibal. Disapproval, sharper now as it hums past his lips.

“Keep those pretty eyes on me,” the man says, running a hand - trembling with excitement - over Will’s curls to push them back from his face. “That’s a good boy.”

By contrast to the boy nodding obedient on the screen, the boy on the couch - no gentleness in his eyes now, no calculated insecurity - snorts.

Hannibal doesn’t look towards him. Can’t look away from the screen, can’t stop watching as Will keeps his eyes trained up, wide and a little afraid, as the man fucks an unsteady rhythm into his mouth. Hannibal’s fingers tighten around his glass - his jaw works, once, in terse allowance for the strain he feels cracking through his ribs, snapping each one free until his lungs fill with blood and darkness pours from him like a flood of retribution.

Chianti is a fine pairing for jealousy, he considers, finishing his glass and setting it aside.

“I’m gonna be real gentle to you, okay Will?” The man’s voice pierces the soothing sound of wine filling Hannibal’s glass again, and the lovely whining whimper that fills the space between Will’s mouth and the man’s cock is as a gunshot, startling and deafening to Hannibal’s escalating nerves.

The man pulls his cock slowly free of Will’s lips and moves to the bed. Settling on the edge, with a single quick glance towards the camera, he begins to stroke himself.

“Come stand in front of me,” he coaxes, a syrupy tone that hides beneath it poison. “I want to see how pretty you are.”

Will stands and blocks the view of the man when he steps in front of the camera, although the shuffling sound of skin-on-skin can still be clearly heard. A hesitation, held for a specific count to seem unsure of what he’s doing, before Will starts to peel off the thin t-shirt he wears, clinging loose to a body yet to find its strength.

A lower sound, now, from Hannibal - nearly a growl, quickly passing jealousy and falling into a thicker and more muddled miasma. Anger. Possession. Disgust. Arousal, too, a lighter tone in the rising cacophony of sensation - for Will here and now, for Will there and then, for the play-acting and deception so skillfully executed that Hannibal has to remind himself that even at this extraordinarily young age, Will had already been rendered far from innocent.

He reaches out to grasp Will by the back of the neck, feeling him jump a little beneath the unexpected touch, and he pulls him closer across the span of couch. Tugs the boy nearly into his lap, still watching Will work his clothing off on-screen with sweet lying apologetic little mumbles of, “I haven’t done this much.”

“That’s okay,” the man answers, unable to hide his excitement at this revelation. “I’ll be real gentle.” Stroking faster now, as Will slides his jeans lower, stepping out of them with an awkward near-stumble.

Hannibal presses his nose into the boy’s hair, holding Will against him. The wine glass is set aside, and he pulls the boy fully into his lap, keeping him turned towards the screen, hands spreading over his stomach as he watches the film over Will’s shoulder and presses his teeth into his skin. To feel Will here, pressed against him, not the pale waif on the screen now standing bare.

“Turn around for me,” the man moans restlessly. “Real slow, okay?”

The camera captures thin thighs and a hairless chest, a fine thatch of hair above Will’s cock, the flushed curve of his ass as he turns and asks, aching sweetness, “Like this?”

“Why are you showing this to me, Will?” Hannibal finally asks, a menacing timbre, frustrated by the lack of an appropriate target to set his building violence on, finding only Will and curling his fingers harsher against his belly.

The boy in his lap hums, shifts, and rolls his hips in slow deliberation, rubbing against Hannibal’s cock through his pants, already semi-hard from the film alone, predictable. A soft sound, difficult to tell which Will makes it, before the boy on screen follows some gestured instructions they can't see.

Another slow roll of hips, as Hannibal’s hands press more insistently against Will’s stomach, impatient for an answer. He gets another slow arch of his hips back, before Will turns his head, an almost nuzzle with how close they are.

The boy on screen moves towards the bed now, climbs onto it with feigned childish imbalance, scrambles to rest on all fours on it, as the Will here, now, parts his lips to whisper.

"You wanted to see me work."

Hannibal’s fingers snare around Will’s throat to bring him back against him, kissing through his hair, across his cheek. The hand on his belly slides lower, to play at the button of his jeans, working them open slowly before finally sliding his hand inside to rub over the top of Will’s boxers.

“Is it - is it going to hurt?” Will asks from the bed, watching the man circle around him, worrying his lip between his teeth. Wariness in his voice, a note of fear plucked through the apprehension that vibrates through his thin body.

“Real gentle,” the man repeats, as he climbs onto the bed behind Will. “I wouldn’t want to hurt such a pretty boy. I’m not like that.”

He curls over Will, pressed smothering across his back, kissing sloppy across the same shoulder where Hannibal’s teeth sink a little harder now. Both rubbing against the same boy, Hannibal’s hand curled around Will’s cock through the thin material over it, the man grinding himself between the boy’s cheeks.

On screen, Will is angled towards the camera, the man obviously interested in seeing his face more than the actual act of defiling him. And now, with nothing in front of him, young, proud boy that he is, Will rolls his eyes.

In Hannibal’s lap, his Will groans.

The preparation doesn't take long, for the kid in the film, despite the man’s repeated whispered assurances that he would be gentle, and Will makes quiet little pained sounds, whimpers, sobs, towards the end, as the man enters him.

"I'm sorry," his voice trembles. "I'm... it hurts..."

The man delights in this, no empty promises now, and his hands settle just in view against Will’s hips to pull him further back against his cock.

"He was my fifth," Will whispers harshly, turning his head back again, lips parted on pleased, warm sounds to contrast the little cries of pain of his younger self on screen. He pushes his hips back harder against Hannibal's, spreads his thighs more and moans.

"First time I used a belt," he sighs - on screen, Will sobs in agony - "First time I was filmed... nnn -"

Hannibal remembers the rough sensation of leather snaring tight around his own neck and groans low against Will’s shoulder, an unrestrained shiver splitting through his skin at the promise of what’s to come. He pushes his thumbs into Will’s jeans, snarling low for him to pull them off, and works his own down balancing the boy across his thighs.

He forces a breath, a steadying of his heart as envy and possession decay into anger, a raw nerve struck watching the boy on screen cry. Even the awareness of the act is scarcely enough to still the furious feeling curling his fingernails sharp against the inside of Will’s thighs, red marks rising in their wake, no outlet for this sensation but sex and violence, no sin-eater to devour the rage but Will in his lap.

“Please,” the boy on screen chokes through a sob, head ducking, hands curling against the sheets. Rough fingers find his hair and pull his head up, insistent on capturing every tear on film, every broken whimper that shudders past Will’s parted lips.

Mine mine mine, the only refrain that sings through Hannibal now, a furious symphony building with every moan of the boy in his lap, every cry of the boy on screen. Tears and sobs and whines and sighs that are his, now, to be claimed by no one else - convincing enough to tease Hannibal’s pulse faster even as he reminds himself of the boy’s falsity. A sigh, swallowing dry before Hannibal wets his fingers in his mouth and presses them harshly against Will’s opening.

Will swallows a curse, the fricative hanging on his lips before he sighs it away, whether out of genuine concern for being struck or to delay the inevitable, Hannibal no longer cares. He lets this one slide. Presses his fingers harder, spit not quite enough to ease the push, but Will yields to him regardless.

Conditioned.

Practiced.

In a moment of almost inexplicable strangeness, the two Wills moan in tandem.

"Feels good?" The man’s voice is shattered glass now, his sick fantasies fulfilled by the talented, trembling silph pushing back against his cock and pretending it hurts to do so.

"Feels so good, Will, fuck, oh fuck, baby, hold still, hold still don't squirm..."

In Hannibal’s lap, Will shivers, makes a helpless little noise, as though scared to disobey the instruction himself.

The obedience to another voice is felt, registered, and responded to in an instant. Hannibal snares Will by the throat, fingers pressed beneath his jaw to raise it, to keep his eyes up on the screen. A thumb strokes his skin, almost affectionate, before he presses rough kisses to Will’s cheek, his ear, biting there before moving to his neck.

A mottling of healing bruises, some Hannibal’s own work, some not, each tasted open-mouthed and hungry.

“Yeah, baby,” moans the man on screen, voice rising on the word. “You want to make me cum? You like that, baby? Want me to cum in you?”

Hannibal snorts derisively, distracted by the words, by the shrill and disruptive voice of this other person uninvited into his territory.

“‘Baby’,” echoes Hannibal with spite tightening his voice, before he spits harshly in his hand, stroking it to brusquely coat his cock.

A hard sigh as he lines himself up against Will, feels the boy yield even with the coarse friction between them, and heavy-lidded watches as Will ducks his head again on screen, feigning pain, only to have his hair pulled enough to raise his face.

Shifting harder up into Will now, here, fingers clenching against his throat.

"No," the word is obscured strangely on screen, almost warbled in feigned pain, and the man pays it no heed, keeps whispering his own dirty fantasy against the soft pale skin of the younger boy’s shoulder as his older counterpart trembles, forced to watch as well. Cock hard, thighs parted wide, breath coming in uneven stutters.

And then Will’s eyes find the camera, for a brief moment look directly at them both before turning aside, adjusting his position almost imperceptibly, pleasure finally flooding his features as he parts his lips in a silent moan of need, cheeks dark now, the color Hannibal finds so fetching.

After that, it doesn't take long. The man takes his pleasure, shuddering and cursing against Will who just holds still and takes it, expression almost bored where the man can't see, too preoccupied in his own desire to not notice the visible release of tension from Will’s muscles. 

Behind Will, now, Hannibal tenses in anticipation, and Will licks his bottom lip into his mouth with a grin. He shifts, just enough, to pull off and push back down on Hannibal’s cock, is rewarded with another kiss bitten to his neck.

Before them, the man pulls out, and Will sprawls, buries his face in his arms and cries; weak, choked little noises of utter anguish, so convincing that Hannibal growls again, possessive, angry, aroused beyond coherent words, and in his lap Will feels victory swell in his chest.

"Oh beautiful boy, oh sweet pretty boy don't cry, don't, shhh..."

Sweet assurances, as false as the tears being calmed, bring the man closer into frame again. Half dressed still, cock limp through the open v of his pants, spent. The boy on screen lets himself be turned, slides his arms around the man and clings in childish need, seeking comfort.

Little hands slide over the man’s back, lower still to his pants. Fingers deftly pull the belt free as he continues his sweet little whimpers against the hapless man's neck.

Hannibal stills now, shifts to a deep, slow roll of hips up into Will, the grasping claiming clutching of hands and mouth becoming languid.

He watches.

Will times the sobs that wrack his slight body with the tugs needed to free the belt, hiding the movement beneath his own.

“I’m sorry.” He shudders and wraps his other arm over the man’s shoulder, an awkward childish embrace. “You’re so nice and - ” Stammers and stutters, boyish and afraid.

“Pretty Will, don’t cry,” the man consoles him, venom in the honey of his voice. “We can see each other again. Would you like that?”

A look of revulsion crosses Will’s features, caught on the camera, before he snuffles and nods, burying his face against the man’s neck as he twists the belt in increments around his fists.

“Idiot,” Hannibal murmurs, transfixed as he rocks himself slowly up against Will. The boy’s arms loop back around his neck, working his hips in languid circles, and his grin widens as he feels Hannibal’s mouth move in distraction against his neck, lightless black eyes focused on the film.

"Good, good boy, that's my good Will." Hands stroke Will’s curls from his face, and Will leans back, just watching the man with a crumpled expression utterly devoid of real tears. It takes a moment, but the man stills, confused, and under him, the little boy grins.

Not as quick as he had been with Hannibal, still learning and practicing, but fast enough to manage to wrap the belt around the man’s neck, tighten it and hold - the loop over the front, over his throat, crossed at the back.

The man chokes, twists, hands up to pull the leather away and Will snares him back, legs around his middle to stop him from gaining leverage, breaking free.

Sighing rough against Will’s neck, all the air pushed from his lungs and all the tension snapping free to allow his heart to race now, Hannibal thrusts up hard against the boy. Darkness spilling over, welling and pouring from him in harsh growls.

The man finds his strength, animal panic as he starts to go red, and slings a fist out blindly, catching Will across the mouth. The boy gasps, blinks wide at the shock but doesn’t loosen the clenched fists around stiff leather. A grin, blood dark between his teeth, as he jerks the belt tighter.

“Will,” murmurs Hannibal, unabashed adoration of the brutal boy straddling his thighs, hands skimming up to curl around his cock.

The boy’s legs are strong, but not so strong as the older man in his throes of panic, and he starts to break free of him, scrambling backwards towards the camera now, one hand clawing useless at the leather strap. Will’s grin shifts just so into gritted teeth, holding fast as he’s dragged along the bed by the man, and he ducks his head to bring it down fast against the man’s nose.

A wet crunch of cartilage, blood spilling down Will’s face when the man’s nose cracks beneath it and his yelp escapes as only a strangled gasp.

Hannibal groans low, eyes barely open as he watches the blood spill across Will’s eyes, cheeks, and his - admittedly - pretty mouth. Above him, the gorgeous boy trembles, body taut in pleasure, arched beautifully for Hannibal’s hands to explore and touch, to stroke over his nipples, drag his nails down his ribs.

On screen the struggle continues. The man refusing to die quickly, and Will working to kill him.

Blood and thick gasps, and the cool, even breathing of the boy that Will does not match now, with Hannibal fucking into him with a deliberate, slow pace. He moans, wanton and loud, and bites his lip hard.

"More," he gasps, arching his back, rolling his hips, giving Hannibal the show he wants to experience as he watches the one he'd been surprised with. Hands settle on Will’s hips and work to push him down harder, pulling helpless, loud whimpers from him.

Beyond, the man’s struggles have ebbed, slowed to near nothing, and yet Will does not release him when he fully stills. He holds, the strain evident in his arms, fingers white where the belt is looped tight enough to cut off circulation.

"Clever boy," Hannibal purrs, voice rough, low, and he moves to stroke Will again, faster now. The sound Will makes is guttural.

The man’s hands fall from where they clutched desperately against the belt, and a sudden tremor jerks his limbs in hideous shudders. Will tugs the belt again as though to ensure it can go no tighter, and watches wide-eyed as the spasms shake violently through the man that moments before had praised him, fucked him, held him in consolation and manipulation.

No fear in the boy’s eyes, no panic escalating the tempo of his breath. He watches the death response with fascination, and a coy grin caught in the corner of his mouth. Will’s tongue appears, to taste the blood dripped there, and Hannibal groans hard against the boy’s shoulder, squeezing his cock, digging nails into his hip, driving quick thrusts inside him, not unlike the spasms ebbing away on the screen.

Hannibal does not slow, stroking Will faster, squeezing harder around the head of his cock, panting breathless. Finally the boy’s hands loosen from the belt and he releases it. The man’s face is purple now, distorted in death, and Will’s grin brightens more.

In Hannibal’s lap, Will whimpers.

It's the quiet after the storm and Will's hands shake with how hard they pulled that belt, blood slowly returning to his fingers as he flexes them.

He winces when he moves, perhaps the pain hadn’t all been faked, but he pays that no mind. Just draws his wrist against his lip, cut and swollen and bleeding.

"Fuck." It's muttered, aimed at nothing and no one. Will slips to the floor and for a while, disappears from view.

In Hannibal’s lap, Will braces for a strike.

Conditioned.

Practiced. 

The camera rolls, focused on the man on the bed, pale and unmoving. Silence in the room except for the little sounds that flutter free from Will and the noises of their rough joining and finally the crack of Hannibal’s hand against Will’s cheek, fingers snaring it as soon as the slap connects.

He grins, a genuine delight rarely seen with such openness before he pulls Will back against him to kiss him.

“Watch,” Will breathes against his mouth, and Hannibal chases another kiss before the camera moves.

The boy, lip swollen, face streaked in crimson, but otherwise no worse for the wear, turns it on himself first. Amusement in his grin before he turns the camera away, to bring it closer to the bed. A slow pan, from the man’s feet, up his rumpled pants and across his softened cock, still hanging from his fly. Stomach, chest, and finally, it hovers over the man’s face.

The color lingers, no pressure of circulation to move the blood back to where it belongs, his skin livid purple-red and eyes still wide. Lightless, flattened now, they stare empty up into the camera whose angle shifts suddenly to the side of his face instead.

Will holds the camera across from himself, the man’s face between the lens and himself, and grins as he murmurs, mocking, “Wrap your pretty lips around that.”

Hannibal draws a breath, holds it and feels his body give way to release, buried deep in the squirming boy in his lap as the one on screen presses a lingering, moaning kiss to the man’s open mouth.

It’s obscene, filthy, and Will forces himself to hold out, hold back, until the camera is turned away, fumbled to turn off, the screen freezing on a blur. Then he allows himself to cum, a blissful release of delicious building tension.

For a moment longer, they stay still, before Hannibal guides Will off him, and turns him so they're facing each other. Half-dressed and sated. Will’s arm snakes out to pull Hannibal close, blood still humming with adrenaline, reliving that kill, Hannibal’s pleasure in it.

It's lingering, languid, mouths soft against each other as hands seek to just touch, Will’s draped over Hannibal’s shoulders, Hannibal’s splayed hot and wide just under Will’s shirt over his stomach and sides.

"Remarkable boy," he murmurs, brushing his lips over the red mark on Will’s face that he had just a moment before brutally left on him.

"I learned," Will softly murmurs. "I practiced..."

"But extraordinary even then," Hannibal remarks, a compliment given in earnest, without barbs beneath it. "A prodigy." He smiles faintly at this, charmed by the idea of it, by Will as concept as much as Will incarnate.

He glides his hands along Will's back to keep him close, lying lengthwise along the couch with Will held close atop him. No mind now for the anger that begged him to tear himself and the boy - the only outlet close at hand - seam from seam. No mind for the maddening need to reclaim the boy as his.

A quiet fascination. An awe.

Hannibal teases Will's hair back out of his face, and traces the red lines left by his hand to follow the curves of Will's lips.

"We will go together," Hannibal decides. "When it is time, so that I may see what your transformations have yielded." He guides the boy lower, mouths meeting warmly. "To kiss the blood from your skin, and feel the racing of your heart."

Will smiles against it, having earned that, the leniency, the words, the request itself. He bites his lip gently, pulls back.

"Take me with you, next time,” he murmurs. "Let me watch you promise them the world."

It's teasing, warm, joking and somehow still commanding. Will stretches languid and long over Hannibal’s body and then settles, cheek against his shirt as his fingers work to languidly divest him of it.

"And to dinner. Take me to dinner again."

He grins, lifts his face to see.

"Please."

Hannibal relaxes beneath the nuzzling, the warmth, the unusual tenderness between them drawn from full and open awareness of their shared violence. He watches the boy's fingers work his shirt open and shifts out of it, tugging a hand through Will's hair to pull him back against his chest.

"I will consider dinner," he murmurs into the boy's curls, "if you agree to wear something less offensive than that threadbare sweater."

Will hums, pleased, lips still soft and damp against Hannibal's chest, warm hair brushing Will’s skin before he pushes himself up.

"You may dress me, Hannibal, in anything you wish that polite society can accept,” he grins. "Make me a lordling, Dr Lecter."

Hannibal hums, considers the boy’s other request, eyes closed to remember the curious interest that grabbed the boy when he watched the man shudder into silence beneath his hands.

"How would you feel, Will, watching me seduce and dismantle a boy so similar to yourself?" Hannibal wonders, keeping his pleasure at the thought far from his voice. Trained to neutrality, distance, even as Will presses languid kisses to his chest. "In truth none compare," he admits, "but there is a risk. Emotions can flare unexpectedly."

Will makes no comment. Dismantling would hardly prove frightful but the seducing... his chest tightens a little at the thought.

"Perhaps we can fuck your toy together,” he whispers, smile dark, coy, hiding behind it the first beginnings of cool worry. 

A brisk slap for the swear, more for surprise than pain, catches Will across the cheek. Hannibal eases back again, curls that same hand through the boy's hair to draw him near.

"Perhaps," Hannibal allows. "Would you enjoy that as much as I enjoyed watching you, Will? Another boy beneath me, my fingers at his throat?"

Will makes no answer, he knows his lie will be read too easily from him. Instead he presses himself closer, insinuates himself in the heavy embrace of the man beneath him and parts Hannibal’s lips with his own when he kisses him.

Perhaps he would enjoy it. Watching a life end for him instead of his own.

Outliving.

Surviving.

As he has done all his life, by choice.

Or perhaps he would kill the kid himself. Break a pattern. Start anew.

Pretend that his entire being isn’t tensing at the thought of Hannibal’s attention elsewhere, and potentially dying with the boy he will bring home that night.

"A beautiful gift," Hannibal finally acknowledges. The video, the boy's skill, Will himself. All breathtaking in their cruelty, all profound sources of a primal satisfaction. "I look forward to sharing such generosity in return."

Hannibal wonders, quiet and content in doing so, if perhaps there will come a day when Will's talent exceeds his own. When it's finally time to break the stalemate, and he finds himself matched - outmatched, even - by one whose natural skill he helped to hone into a thing of brutal beauty.

A fitting way to go, he decides, and the poetry of it pleases him.

He seems content to remain there, pinned beneath the weight of the boy above him, tracing the ridges of his spine through his sweater, counting vertebrae with clever fingers until they, too, grow heavy with sleep.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"How did you come to know our esteemed doctor?" the woman asks, her eyes eating Will, devouring him, now that an acquaintance, a new target is in her sights to get her to quite the same desired end._
> 
> _"Oh I begged," Will grins, "to be allowed to meet him."_
> 
> Hannibal takes Will to a dinner party. Will's pride gets the better of him.
> 
> WARNINGS FOR THIS CHAPTER: graphic violence, implied torture, cruelty, physical abuse, mental abuse, blood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ooof ok this chapter is a bit rough, we are warning you. But. It's very important for character development (a little voice inside my head screams THIS WAS MEANT TO BE A BACKGROUND SMUT FIC NOT A 20-CHAPTER EPIC WITH A CHARACTER ARC) and in the end there is gentleness.
> 
> But Will does fuck up. Really badly. Idiot boy.

Hannibal took the measurements himself.

He insisted to Will that he strip down to his shorts for it, utterly detached from the process of wrapping the tape around Will’s skinny limbs. He had remained just as distanced when he decided that to measure the boy’s inseam, the shorts had to go as well, kneeling at Will’s feet to press the cool plastic to his thighs, both sides, trailing fingernails along his bare skin as he did so.

It was only when he took the tape to Will’s neck, jotting down the measurement and then tightening it further and further until Will relinquished a gasping moan that he took his fill of him.

The suit appeared several days later, from a very particular and difficult to commission bespoke tailor.

“A cocktail party,” Hannibal informs him. “Colleagues, and various self-proclaimed intelligentsia and socialites. Predominantly the usual mess of attention-seeking.” He offers the suit to Will, still wrapped from the tailor, with an unreadable smile curving his lips. “I imagine your presence will make a much more lively evening, for myself at least, if no one else.”

Will takes the suit, genuinely pleased with the gift, with the way the heavy fabric feels even through the bag. He doesn’t leave to dress, no point in the pretentious show of modesty, not after all they’ve shared already.

He dresses, though, with a surprising amount of care, considering how Will treats the rest of his clothes.

The suit is dark, but grey, not black, with pinstripes just darker than the fabric itself, enough detail to appear detailed, not enough to appear gaudy.

It fits Will perfectly, as planned, and he turns side on, eyes down to the way the pants sit snug against his slim hips, as he carefully buttons his shirt. His hair falls into his face, longer, now than when he had first met Hannibal. He hasn’t cut it. He wonders if it bothers Hannibal.

In the end, all that’s left is the tie, one he is prepared for Hannibal to choose, considering his own lack of selection, and Will stands patiently in front of him, dressed for the nines, his collar up, and waits.

Hannibal adjusts his own tie, brows drawing in as he studies his own reflection, a three piece of pristine black with a dark crimson shirt beneath it, far more reserved than his usual flourishes of checks and plaids. He seems satisfied enough, and finally turns to take in Will.

A deep breath drawn slowly at the sight of him, scrutinizing the lay of fabric first and then taking in the whole. Tasteful, Hannibal lauds himself silently, an elegant simplicity that highlights the wild youth of the boy within it, tousled hair and flushed cheeks and curious blue eyes.

“Striking,” remarks Hannibal, letting his gaze linger a moment more as a smile catches the corner of Will’s mouth. “Silver, I think.”

A moment’s search yields the tie - pale grey, a slight sheen to the silk without appearing flashy, an accent rather than a statement. He surrounds Will from behind, watching him in the mirror as he settles the tie against his collar and draws it into an intricate knot. Brushing a thumb against his jaw, Hannibal delights in the moment, tying a tie for a boy too young to even drink, to bring him to a cocktail party and quietly scandalize the upper echelons of Baltimore’s high society.

“I would recommend avoiding the bourbon,” Hannibal murmurs against his ear.

Will smiles, enjoying his own reflection, enjoying how he looks beside Hannibal. Both beautiful, untouchable. Like statues brought to life for a night. His smile widens.

“I can hold my own,” he purrs, eyes to Hannibal’s in the mirror, he doesn’t turn. “With your high class society, without the aid of alcohol.”

He draws his hands down his suit, for once entirely innocent in the gesture, just to see and feel and experience the richness of the fabric, the way it accentuates his skin tone, brings out the gray beneath the blue in his eyes.

He feels, for the first time, genuinely worthy of something.

He bites his lip.

“If only they knew,” he murmurs, almost mournful, “the things we did, the things we do.”

Hannibal smoothes the tie beneath Will’s coat and turns down his collar, careful fingers moving precisely over the fold in the fabric.

“That is the joy of the experience,” Hannibal responds softly. “To move amongst them, as though we were a part of that world rather than our own, and know that they cannot smell the blood on our hands, see it in our smiles.”

A hand lingers against the boy’s throat, and he catches Will gently by the jaw to turn their mouths together.

“Wolves amongst sheep too placid to feel predators in their midst,” he breathes when they part. “A quiet sense of power.”

He thinks of Zeus and of Ganymede, and how delightful it will be to snare the boy in his talons and drag him home to reclaim him once the night is through - this remarkable boy who wears blood and gore as beautifully as he does bespoke garments.

“You will hold your own, then,” Hannibal finally agrees, with no more emphasis than that. “Come. It would be untoward for us to appear later than fashionably necessary.”

-

Will is amused to recognize the hotel in which the party is being held. A grand lobby rendered in rich colors, golds and scarlets, plush couches and carpets set against glossy Travertine tile. He’s been here before, once, when on a whim he decided against turning towards the rough end of town as he normally might. Plied with expensive drinks at the bar, he had made short work of the visiting businessman, old enough to be his grandfather, who had grunted and sweat atop him in the expensive bed before meeting an untimely end at the loop of his own belt.

It had been filed as an accidental death by autoerotic asphyxiation.

Funny what those stiff and staid business types get into when they leave home.

They’ve scarcely made their way into the private room, less luminous than the lobby but still exquisitely appointed, before Hannibal is snared lightly by the arm to be drawn into a series of cheek-kisses with an excitable woman eager to lay praise on him for a recently published piece.

Will listens, watches. Takes in all the information he can from simply looking.

The woman is a fan but not a friend. She had wanted, at one point, perhaps still wants now, to be much more. But not for Hannibal’s work, not for his prestige; for his money. Will grins. For sex.

When Hannibal introduces them - Will misses her name - he is the epitome of a high-born gentleman. Will’s ability to utterly charm is one of the reasons Hannibal allows him to live, one of the reasons Will has survived so well on his own.

"How did you come to know our esteemed doctor?" the woman asks, her eyes eating Will, devouring him, now that an acquaintance, a new target is in her sights to get her to quite the same desired end.

"Oh I begged," Will grins, "to be allowed to meet him. My thesis last year followed his work on social exclusion theory. He is the forerunner in his field."

He ducks his head in amusement, gives Hannibal a coy smile.

"Dr. Lecter has been incredibly generous in his teaching."

It was a risky maneuver to not discuss a story of their acquaintanceship before they entered, but Hannibal is pleased by the result of his gamble. There was a potential for Will to freeze on the first interaction, nerves snaring him into stammering or silence or slips of the tongue, of course. He is young and out of his element.

That much more satisfying, then, when he adapts so readily, and Hannibal’s growing trust in the boy pays off. He’d never even mentioned his paper on evolutionary exclusion theory to him - Will must have been researching him on his own time.

Clever boy.

“Are you considering teaching, doctor?” asks the woman brightly. “There must be so many students who could benefit from your knowledge.”

Hannibal affects a cheery smile, brief. “Unfortunately, not at this time. A mentorship, for now, since Mr. Graham has proven himself thus far to be quite capable.”

He yields the same smile to Will, but is careful to manage their shared body language. Not angling too much towards him, keeping the same distance between the boy and himself as he does with others.

“He should meet Professor Barnes,” she exclaims, and as Hannibal draws a breath she snares Will’s arm, and rests a hand on Hannibal’s. “You make your rounds, doctor - I’ll take this one off your hands.”

A gentle tease, met with a polite nod. “Of course, Marie - I’m certain he’ll enjoy the company.”

Hannibal glances past her, a long look to Will as he’s pulled away - desire and annoyance mingling at once, when all Hannibal truly desires is to watch Will cavort so elegantly among the livestock until it’s time to leave, to peel free the beautiful trappings and bare the monster beneath.

He snares a glass of wine from a passing server, and swallows the feeling down with a sip of moderately tasteful merlot.

Will’s eyes linger on Hannibal wherever he is pulled. He turns his head and catches sight, the utterly beautiful silhouette of him, glass in hand, entertaining. Will himself finds his company sought, once he passes whatever test Marie seems to think her company is worthy of.

She asks him mindless questions, goads for a truth Will never gives, instead skirts just to watch her worry and try to push again. In the end, Will finds himself with a glass of wine of his own, and meeting professor Barnes, who turns out to be a very learned and interesting man.

For a while, Will loses himself genuinely in discussion, an in-depth talk of the empathy gap and the lack of study in that field. A small group of people join them, gather to listen, to contribute, to coax Will’s attention with different topics and more wine.

One man catches his eye. Not a professor, but one smart enough to emulate. He’s a hunter, but nothing near as dangerous as what Will or Hannibal are. But his eyes strip Will slowly, peel back every layer of clothing before stroking the skin.

Will never approaches him, does little more than bite his lip, just once, for the man to see. He finds Hannibal on the other side of the room, engrossed, similarly, in conversation, and peels himself from Marie's clinging grasp to join him.

"I've been here," Will murmurs low, as he stands close to Hannibal and smiles as the person he had previously engaged in discussion leaves politely to allow them space.

"Though last time the company was far from this coherent, clever discussion."

He sips his wine, cheeks already warm, eyes bright. He wants nothing more than to pull Hannibal against him, kiss him deep and allow his new suit to acquaint itself with the floor.

"Are you enjoying yourself?" he asks, smile teasing, wicked. “Sir?"

Hannibal makes a small sound, somewhere between warning and amusement, and lets his eyes linger on Will for as long as he can reasonably get away with it. That exquisite color has bloomed across the charming boy's cheeks again, the twist of his smile clever - sly, even.

“I am enjoying watching you - in your carriage and comportment. And you, simply,” replies Hannibal, voice low enough not to carry, careful to keep the unspoken language between them at a casual distance. “You seem to be making quite an impression.”

He is pleased by this, profoundly, and he allows it to show in his tone, in the soft smile that appears. The conversations into which Hannibal had circulated were easy enough to manage while distracted by the sight of the boy, pulled from one conversation to the next, fawned over and flirted with and fed suggestions to tell more about Hannibal. He’d heard them in passing, heard the easy laugh that dismissed so much of it, and entertained himself in his own conversations by imagining how blood would color the dark grey of the boy’s suit, licked from clever fingers as it dripped fresh down his skin.

He clears his throat, voice quieting. “When you were here before, Will - how would you describe your evening?”

Will watches Hannibal for longer, lets his attentions drift down the angles of his face and the lines of his body, voice low. “Older than you, by a great deal. Could hardly keep it up between that and the alcohol,” he responds and Hannibal’s brow raises only barely. The boy’s voice is scarcely audible as he adds, terribly pleased with himself, “He was still inside me when I ended it.”

Hannibal hides the widening of his smile behind his glass. Will grins openly. 

It’s caught by more than Hannibal, however, as the lesser hunter in their midst circles nearby. Orbiting around conversations close enough to Will without drawing near yet, especially now as he notices the proximity of Hannibal. A cursory look between them yields little information, and he holds Will’s eyes for a moment.

A nod, barely perceptible, in the direction of the bathroom.

Enough that Will sees it, and presses his thumb to his teeth before feigning coyness to look away.

Enough that Hannibal sees it from his peripheral, and the warm amusement between them cools to a tangible chill.

“Are you making new friends, Will?”

"I am holding my own," Will replies softly, very aware of the attention, of the way Hannibal responds to it.

He lets his eyes scan the room a moment, smiles at those he has already met. It's a covering, another veil of distance before his eyes return to the man watching him, slide over his form and look just to the side of him. 

"If you'll excuse me, doctor.” This loud enough to be caught by passing curious ears, another cover, another veil, before Will smiles genuinely at Hannibal and passes him on his way to the bathroom.

It's a believable enough excuse, with wine flowing freely as it is, and in truth, Will is curious to see what Hannibal will do. Neither can hunt here, too close to Hannibal’s own life to risk it for him, too affluent for Will, the outsider, the unknown and watched entity. 

But beyond the hunt there are simple human pleasures.

Will is scarcely in the bathroom when he hears the door open again, smiling to himself at the man’s tenacity and blatant desire, he turns, but finds, instead, a familiar face, familiar hands softly turning the lock on the door.

Will feels adrenaline spike in his blood, cool and comfortable, and swallows.

There is an instant of surprise before Will smiles easily, and that moment of hesitation is enough. Hannibal returns the smile, mirthless, and steps closer. He seems larger, looming, and does not reach for Will.

"I apologize," he offers, entirely disingenuous. "You seem to have been waiting for someone else."

Hannibal allows his pulse to move a little faster now. He presses a hand to the wall beside Will's head, leaning near enough now to breathe him in. Soap and wine and expensive fabric and sudden nervousness, rising sinuous through the other scents.

"Since you seem to be eminently capable of holding your own," Hannibal suggests softly, "perhaps I should leave you to your new acquaintance then. Is that what you would prefer, Will?"

Fingers twine around Will's tie, tugging firmly, hard enough to earn a gasp.

Will swallows, both pleased and very slightly worried of what this means or could. He smiles regardless, eyes down to the tie tether before coming up to look at Hannibal. 

"You could both stay," he whispers, the suggestion suddenly humming through his blood with deep excitement. "Touch and bend and fuck me. "

He knows Hannibal can't strike him here, not in a place people would ask questions. He licks his lips.

"I want you to fuck me. He can suck."

A cthonic note of disapproval, more felt than heard, rumbling low against Will's skin when Hannibal ducks his head to press it to Will's temple. It might be an affectionate nuzzle in the right mood, but here, like this, it is animalistic, threatening and possessive.

"I do not share well with others," Hannibal intones. "Especially when I have brought you here, in trust and perhaps in foolishness, with the expectation that you may be able to behave reasonably for a single evening."

He kisses Will's cheek, a mockery of sweetness, and presses his body against him, smothering him against the wall.

"But by all means. Bring him here and see what comes of it. You've managed to be so charming but it may be that you've exhausted your reserves of it."

A tug on the door rattles against the lock, and Hannibal's brows lift ever so slightly.

"Your guest has arrived. I should take my leave then, since he would provide as much to you as I do, it seems."

Will swallows, the tension from the words vibrating through his skin, down to his bones. He has seen Hannibal dangerous, he has been at his mercy trying to breathe, but he has never been as frightening as when he had held Will down and showed him complete indifference.

This comes close.

He steps close and kisses Hannibal instead, deep and hard and long enough to make it hard to breathe before pulling back.

“Six,” he breathes, eyes down to watch Hannibal’s lips part and gently settle again. “Six people have charmingly, softly, gently propositioned me this evening,”

He licks his lips and glances up.

“What a feast that would make.”

The door rattles again, a mild impatience, and Will keeps his eyes on Hannibal.

“Who is he?” he asks gently. “Would he be missed?”

“It matters not,” Hannibal informs him, curt. “I am not here to procure. Everyone who is here is someone, noted and accounted for in their attendance.”

He loosens his grip on Will’s tie. Slides it back in place. Smooths it with a hand, and with that same hand catches Will by the hair and pulls, tilting his neck to curve and bare it.

“Everyone except for you,” he reminds the boy in warning. “By all means, Will, continue your games if what I offer you is so insufficient. But know that not a single one of those six or any others would ask after you were you to take a leave of absence from your studies with me, and not return.”

Hannibal releases him with a light shake, watches as color floods his cheeks and flushes his parted lips. He kisses him softly, chasing his lips with his thumb, pressing it against Will’s mouth to move it out of shape and trace along his teeth before he finally withdraws.

“You will pay penance for your mouth,” Will is informed, as Hannibal lingers in the mirror to ensure he’s arranged. “It is entirely up to you how much more you would care to acquire.”

Will swallows, thick, and watches Hannibal put himself back together to the pristine man who had entered the bathroom with him.

“Fucken thought I might,” he murmurs, watches dark eyes slide to him before Hannibal blinks and turns to leave, unlocking the door and apologising profusely to the man who had waited.

It’s not the one Will had hoped to meet in here initially.

He washes his hands, and takes the necessary time for the blush in his cheeks to subside, for thoughts of mundane things - his studies, paperwork, the idea of working at the FBI for the rest of his life - to ease his erection before following Hannibal out.

He finds the man deep in conversation with Marie and another woman Will has yet to meet, and moves to join them, smiling and politely taking up another glass from a passing waiter. He’s lost count of how many he’s had not because he feels particularly light-headed but because he honestly doesn’t care.

“Will!” 

Hannibal hides the smile at having Will addressed so informally by the woman. Will doesn’t bother.

“Our doctor won’t come clean to me about his next thesis. I’ve been hounding him all evening and barely managed to corner him again. Will you shed some light?”

Will’s eyes flick to Hannibal a moment and he keeps up his easy smile, ducks his head with a soft laugh and tilts it when he raises his eyes again.

“Our doctor is not known for coming clean, Marie,” he replies, bringing the glass to his lips to take a sip. “He is far from the word with his personal work. I’m afraid the only light I can shed is that he will work me into the ground throughout.”

Hannibal’s expression remains one of placid amusement, without sparing more than a polite look to the insolent boy and the fresh glass of wine in his hand.

Marie, however, laughs lightly and rests her hand on Will’s arm again. “You poor thing,” she chuckles. “I imagine our dear doctor can be quite strict at times.”

She receives Hannibal’s passing smile next. “It is in my exacting standards that my best work is completed,” he acknowledges genially. “In truth, I am working with a particularly difficult subject. One that persistently defies my expectations, no matter the degree to which I adjust them. It is trying work, but I feel as though I will be most satisfied with the results when it is at an end.”

“Personally, I find a subject defying expectations to be fascinating,” Will interjects, smiling at the woman clinging to him, offering a small smile to the one just watching him for the moment, with beautiful green eyes.

“It makes for a much more interesting study. Adjusting theories to fit the new parameters. It’s creating an entirely new branch within a field previously studied. It’s pioneering a new idea.”

He licks his lips and brings a hand up to run through his hair, as though utterly excited by what he’s saying, engrossed in the conversation and not the feeling of Hannibal’s gaze burning through him.

“I agree,” the new woman says, her voice soft, carefully controlled. “You have always been one for bringing unpredictable theories to order, Hannibal, it is in your nature to seek out the uncontrollable and tame it. It’s what makes your work so interesting.”

Will bites the inside of his lip, delighted. The woman continues.

“And the mind is an endless thing to explore. I do hope, though, that you allow your mentee some rest throughout. He is only young.”

She lets her attention linger a moment more on Will, much closer to his age than Hannibal’s, a hint of a smile shared with him.

“Left to his own devices, he would only rest,” Hannibal muses lightly. “I assure you, I only work him to the degree that he requires it. A certain discipline is required for one to make the most of these opportunities, as you well know.”

She tilts her head, bemused, as Hannibal makes a small but gregarious motion between them.

“Will, I don’t believe that you have met Doctor Bloom. A particularly astute psychiatrist turned professor, and - I am honored to say - a former protege of mine.” He meets Will’s eyes evenly, unreadable. “Doctor Bloom, Will Graham, who is currently assisting me in the ongoing study, much discussed.”

Will turns, brows just barely raised in surprise, and takes Dr. Bloom’s hand when she offers it.

“Certainly a pleasure and an honor, Dr. Bloom,” he says, for a change this evening meaning every word. “It would be very enlightening to get your perspective on how Dr. Lecter works, when you have the time, of course, and at the appropriate opportunity.”

“Perhaps,” Dr. Bloom smiles. “Another time. Once Hannibal has given you leave from your work. He never does push harder than is needed.”

A very slight tension enters Will’s smile but his eyes remain wide and pleased, and after a moment he ducks his head on a laugh.

“I will defer to your judgement, Dr. Bloom. Another time.” He takes her hand again, brings it to his lips for a bare-brush that brings color to her cheeks and a gentle part to her lips and smiles. 

“Perhaps I can convince him to invite you to dinner.”

“Alana is fine,” she insists gently, smiling still as she turns her attention back to the older man, observing the interactions with an absolute calm. “Hannibal and I have shared many dinners, although I was never quite the sous chef I’m sure he would have preferred,” she acknowledges, amused. “Perhaps once your work is at an end. I know how trying these things can be.”

Hannibal seems entirely too pleased with her response, turning a genuine smile to her.

“And you are always welcome,” he adds, with a lift of his glass, the same he’s had all night, Will notes. “But before I begin planning a menu at Mr. Graham’s behest, I’m afraid I must take my leave. He’s due back for an early morning tomorrow, and I would be loathe to deny him a further learning opportunity, although tonight has certainly provided one.”

Alana’s formality breaks with a gentle embrace that Hannibal readily returns. “It is wonderful, always, to see you, Doctor Bloom. We’ll speak soon, perhaps over coffee. Marie - a pleasure, as ever.”

Will watches the way Marie envies the embrace, how she shifts her body language, perhaps, to receive one as well and gets but a nod instead. He takes his leave just as politely, taking hands, ducking his head, setting his glass on the tray of a waiter collecting them, and turns to follow Hannibal out.

He can feel the tension slip from the man, like ice or snow off a mountain top. It hits him and tugs at his bones. He remembers, again, the cool warning that Will would pay for his words, and wonders if he’ll be able to leave the apartment for more than a few moments after taking his penance without someone worrying about calling the police.

He’s had worse days.

“A beautiful protege,” Will says, once they’re outside, nearing the car. “You really are a man who collects art.”

There is nothing to be read in Hannibal’s gaze as it meets Will’s over the top of the Bentley. A void, cold and black.

“She is also capable, collected, and intensely clever,” Hannibal intones. “Would that I could find another such as her.”

He enters the car and, in a change from every other time, he does not open Will’s door for him. An echo of the rudeness he’s been dealt throughout the night, taking no pleasure in the sight of the boy as he settles into his seat, and so finding it remarkably easy to avoid watching his slouch, the press of his thumb against his teeth, his narrowed eyes.

“ _Kokoretsi_ ,” Hannibal suggests.

Frustration surpassing the impotence of the context now, escalating rapidly in storm-driven waves of a midnight sea, black and driving fury flowing faster against the shore of his voice.

“Sweetbreads, lungs, liver, kidneys, wrapped in intestines - typically a suckling lamb, but no matter. Only simple seasonings are required if the meat is fresh enough,” he continues, almost conversational now despite the burgeoning darkness. “Salt, olive oil, oregano. Skewered over an open flame, served with vine tomatoes and peppers.”

In truth, it thrills him, this pushing, swelling sensation that tears at his seams. Remarkably similar to how he felt sharing bourbon with the boy a week before, laughing at things no one else could hope to understand, pulling at his chest in much the same way. It matters less what is felt - affection or anger, delight or destruction - but rather that with this boy, this infuriating boy, he feels it all so acutely.

Utterly unwilling, tonight, to let it ease away.

A slight smile that brings no light to his eyes.

“Greek seems fitting.”

Will turns to him, hand slipping from his mouth, eyes narrowing further before he raises an eyebrow.

“You're planning to cook me?” It sounds so ridiculous, voiced, that he actually laughs, a bitter, angry sound.

“The minute it’s done you will regret it,” he tells him, but it’s not a threat. He’s not stupid enough to threaten the man, simply stupid enough to dig his own grave with his words and assumptions.

“Boredom will overtake you again, like it had before I came and pushed it aside. What will you go back to, Hannibal?” he asks. “Hiring whatever you can find for a quick fuck and an easy dinner? Go to your social events alone and eventually succumb to Marie’s desperate desire to see you in bed with her?”

He scoffs, turns back to the window, brings a foot up to rest against the seat.

“I suppose it would be a fitting punishment, for you,” he mutters. “Boredom.”

Hannibal’s fingers tense against the wheel.

“ _Giouvetsi_ ,” Hannibal responds. Notably, he does not reach out to strike Will’s leg, to remove his foot from the seat. He lets it linger, affecting a comfortable disinterest in correcting him any further.

“A stew of lamb involving shallots, garlic, red wine and stock. Cooked for many hours, and served over egg noodles. The key is the tomato sauce in which the meat cooks. Adding cinnamon at the right point will fully illuminate the flavors.”

He does not respond to the boy’s threats, his taunts, his goading words digging at Hannibal for a reaction - any reaction. To scold Will for acting like every other spoiled rent boy - when they both know him to be so far from it - would be to yield the game.

Hannibal remains unmoved.

“I would need to purchase more feta.”

“What an obscene fucken incovenience for you,” Will mutters, not looking over.

He finds he feels utterly no threat at the words, no fear that he will be made into a dish so exquisite he can’t even pronounce it. In a way, it’s a strangely pleasing thought, that he will become something other than himself, something that can please and indulge and present itself after Will as an entity goes away.

He swallows.

What he does feel threatened by instead is the lack of response to him putting his feet on the seat, the lack of chastisement for his words, now that they are safe enough away from the public eye for it to not be an issue of holding back.

He refuses to panic over it. He thinks back to the day he had told Hannibal a man had tried to make him cry, how hard Hannibal had worked to do the same, and how quickly he had managed. He feels the same lump in his throat now, the same fear he had felt then.  
 _  
Unimportant._

 _Unnecessary.  
_  
He thinks of how he had met expectations, exceeded them, how Hannibal had lavished attention on him for it, how he had taken time...

Abandonment requires expectation, Will thinks.

The ride is executed in silence, a barren space between them pressing distance despite their relative nearness. He is not lectured, punished, or reprimanded for the duration, and only as the car settles into the garage, and the door shuts behind it, does Hannibal speak again.

“ _You_ are becoming an inconvenience.”

He exits the car without explanation as to why they’ve arrived here, and not Will’s apartment. Not the corner where he was found, although Hannibal certainly entertained dropping him off there, to find after he’d give the boy several days to consider the error of his ways.

But Hannibal’s blood burns beneath his skin, crawling over his nerves like insects, and he can hardly restrain it enough to carry himself into the house and remove his coat without letting it show.

Will snorts, he can’t help it. Even his father had never chastised him so weakly, and yet beneath it all he feels that power, that terrifying force he has felt crash against him like a tide before. He gives it a few seconds before getting out of the car to follow Hannibal, closing the door quietly behind himself.

The suit feels constricting now, when he tries to gather his breath and not worry about it splitting him at the seams. He brings up a hand to undo the tie, careful with the knot, though his eyes are out of focus elsewhere. He lets the loose fabric rest around his neck, still, as he undoes the top two buttons of his shirt and rolls his neck.

“Only a convenience when you fuck me, right?” he offers, and it’s just as weak as Hannibal’s words had been before. Will shrugs, moves to the stairs to get to Hannibal’s room.

Hannibal has him by the throat before Will hears him move, footsteps silent against the carpet and his speed unnatural.

"Dear Will," he speaks against his ear, a tone of disappointment but little more to be found in it. "I gave you an opportunity tonight. Many of them, in fact, but one in particular."

His hand tightens as his other arm snatches the boy around the waist, hoisting him easily. Will's cry is silenced into a rough choking sound. He kicks his feet behind him, seeking contact with Hannibal's legs. A desperate gesture, flailing and without momentum, that even when his heel contacts Hannibal's shin, there is no response.

"Do you remember, Will? When I told you that the night was yours to make of it what you will?"

Will's toes drag along the floor as Hannibal carries him backwards through the kitchen. He lingers in front of the basement door, sets Will down enough to lean into him, to press him between the cellar door and his own body as he snares the handle.

Will sets his hands against the door and he shoves back, another desperate struggle to push the man off him so he can scramble away. He ducks his head and brings it up quickly, seeking to strike Hannibal behind him, stun him, get away.

He finds his motion predicted and his own head struck against the door, hard enough for him to see stars but not enough to knock him out.

Will makes a soft sound of pain and resumes his twisting, wriggling, writhing to get away. Before him, the door gives, and he finds his feet off the floor again as he’s shoved through, the door snapping closed heavily behind them.

It’s dark, here, but Hannibal seems to know the room intimately, finds no hindrance in the lack of light, and Will feels himself start to panic.

He’s not been in here before, knows it’s where the wine is kept but hardly has time to survey the small room before he’s grabbed by the throat again and by the hair as well this time, and dragged backwards past the waiting bottles.

Quick hands lash out for purchase and manage to topple a few bottles from their racks. Several break, a cacophony of glass and liquid against a hard tile floor, and Hannibal pauses only long enough to tighten his grip before he drags Will through another door and down the stairs.

“Ungrateful,” comes the accusation, a low snarl as he descends into the darkness of the sub-cellar - a basement beneath where he stores the wine. Will’s feet scramble uselessly against the steps and he tries to cough but there’s not enough room in the compression of his trachea to allow it and he chokes down whatever air he can instead.

The temperature here grows noticeably colder as the stairs stop and a polished cement floor comes up roughly beneath Will instead. The air is damp. Acrid, even, with an undercurrent of chemicals.

“Conceited.”

Hannibal jerks his elbow against a light switch on the way past it.

The sound of humming, Will now sees, is from freezers. More than one person should need, a stark sight in memory of Hannibal’s conversation in the car earlier. Tools better suited to a machine shop - saws of all varieties, table and band and circular, sundry power tools hung neatly from the wall.

“Careless.”

Will tries to swallow, finds that impossible as well, and ends up making a strange little sound between pain and panic. He has one hand snared against Hannibal’s where he holds his hair, digging nails hard against the skin, the other tries to pry his fingers from his throat to breathe, just as unsuccessful there.

Had he truly signed his own death warrant? Had his rudeness really been enough to bring him down here?

He forces his heart still, forces his mind to slow but despite everything, he is utterly, childishly terrified of what is about to happen to him.

When Hannibal finally drops him, it’s harsh, winds him against the freezing floor, and Will scrambles up on all fours and back until his back hits a wall and he presses against it, panting, feeling his lungs burn, his throat throb with the pressure it had been under.

Everything hurts, he can see black spots in his vision, and he can’t take his eyes off the man in front of him.

Hannibal’s eyes are shadowed beneath his hair, fallen free from where it was so neatly staid throughout the evening, but Will knows he’s being watched. Him, and no one else, a variation on a theme from throughout the evening.

He works his tie loose and holds it in his hands, beside a table glistening silver. Something one might see at a slaughterhouse.

Or a morgue.

“We might have come back without incident, taken to bed together with no more concern than how wonderfully your suit fit you. How beautifully you moved through the evening. How sincerely I enjoyed seeing you manoeuvre with a social grace beyond your years.”

Hannibal ruches his sleeves up to his elbows, his shirt already dishevelled from dragging the boy through the length of the house.

“Instead, I trusted you to shape the evening into your making. What would suit you best, and you chose implications. Insinuations. So here we have it, this of your own choosing.”

Before Will can even get his hands beneath him to push from the floor Hannibal has him by the hair again, a cruel jerk back to the ground that leaves a few curled strands ripped free between his fingers. He sits astride Will’s back, nearly his entire weight on the boy beneath him, and loops the silver tie around his wrists, clever knots pulled almost too tight.

Will struggles, another helpless animal noise escaping him but no words, no begging, no pathetic whimpers to stop. He can’t give him that, not when it’s possibly the last thing he says. He won’t have Hannibal discard him this way and remember him as a begging, broken thing.

His hands are tied so close there is no give when he moves, uncomfortable but not enough to cut off circulation to his fingers. He’ll die in one piece at least.

Will wonders why his mind goes so determinedly to death, here, why he can’t picture a way out of this, genuine and successful, and why he has never learned to lie to himself.

He rests his forehead against the floor and closes his eyes tight, lips working not to say anything, not to make any sound Hannibal can use, can feed off and relish.

When he’s left still, tied and helpless, Will realizes he’s shaking. And when he finally parts his lips, his gasp trembles with him.

Hannibal unseats himself from the boy’s back, but remains crouched comfortably beside him.

Gently, he brushes the back of his fingers against Will’s cheek. Feels him jerk away from it with more surprise than if he had been struck, and Hannibal sighs.

Regret, in the breath that leaves him before he pulls Will towards him, bringing him near. He cradles the boy, trembling in his arms for but a moment before he hoists him over his shoulder.

He’s given leave to stand for only a moment before Hannibal catches his wrists, bound, and lifts them into the air. Hannibal’s grateful, for the moment, that Will can do little more than watch him wide-eyed as he makes a few adjustments, and then tugs against the tie. Tension, holding Will’s arms above his head, secured to a hook akin to those used for slabs of beef in slaughterhouses.

“My life, Will,” Hannibal finally says, as he walks away from the boy, back towards the table lit gleaming beneath a harsh halogen light. “That is what you gambled with tonight. A game for you, perhaps, but not for me.”

A mechanism hums with the push of a button, and Will is stretched just a little higher, until only his toes press to the cold floor. Hannibal lingers a moment more, at a smaller table beside, and palms something from it before turning back to him.

“My reputation with my peers.” He looms nearer again, to hold the boy’s jaw in his hand and press his thumb across his lips. “My livelihood and what it affords me.”

Will’s breathing catches, eyes wide and pupils huge with fear as he watches Hannibal so close, feels the familiar touches against him in this unfamiliar setting. He can still feel the warmth of him from the moment he had been allowed to press close. Will swallows, turns his head against the hand while it’s there, lets his eyes close when Hannibal allows it.

“It’s all a game to them,” Will murmurs. “A show. Your presentation, your writing, your prestige, your bringing me with you. It’s a game for them. They see only what they want to see, they don’t see beyond the meaning of the words given them, Hannibal, they don’t know.”

He swallows again, blinks his eyes open to look at Hannibal in front of him.

He considers, for a moment, apologizing, but it sticks in his throat.

“I was rude,” he concedes instead, soft. “But not to warrant this, surely not to warrant -”

He swallows again, directs his eyes down. His hands curl in the tie holding him suspended.

A crack breaks the humming silence, the frantic murmurs, as Hannibal brings his hand across Will's face.

"One."

His fingers are soft, fingertips tracing the red stripes over the boy's cheek as Will shudders, eyes wide.

"You are mistaken, Will," Hannibal responds, almost gently. "They see what I wish them to see, and what I gave you opportunity to come near enough tonight. It is their inability to see the truth that is the reason I am able to live as I wish, and you have threatened that. Deliberately. Willfully."

His hand drifts lower from Will's cheek, over the front of his suit, still clinging beautifully tailored to his frame. The regret is palpable, now, twisting somewhere closer to mourning, in the way he touches the length of Will's body as though he never might again.

A glimmer of metal in his hand as he steps closer still, to hold the boy's head with fingers wrapping around the back of his neck.

"This is a grievance beyond being merely rude," he murmurs against Will's cheek, lips soft against his skin still hot from the slap. "Although you were, unbearably. I should have known better, in truth, than to assume you were capable of care for matters such as this."

The caping knife is cold against Will's neck as it settles to his collar and with alarmingly little effort, he begins to split the fabric beneath its blade. Shirt and coat fall free after a few moments, blade carefully angled to make swift work of the material, and only graze the skin of the boy beneath it.

Will gasps, first from shock that the blade isn’t slicing his skin away with the suit he wore, and then because the suit is crumpled on the floor like so many fallen leaves at the end of a season. His breathing grows shallow, his heart hammers in his ears, and Will closes his eyes to lean into the support given him, cruel and false as it is.

He feels like his entire body is vibrating, and he makes a small noise against Hannibal.

“I told them nothing,” he breathes. “You know, you know I said nothing at all that was true. They can remain ignorant, you can have your life around them and within and they will still know nothing, Hannibal, please.”

He shakes Will free of his grip to bring the back of his hand across his mouth again, teeth clenched as he snares him right back again.

"Two."

Hannibal's nails dig into the soft skin of Will's cheeks, drawing him near enough to kiss but instead pulling Will against his shoulder, hand sliding up through his hair to hold him near. A mockery of an embrace, a false warmth.

"And your innuendos, Will? Your little jokes and implications were surely not lost on that company, in particular. What did you imagine would come of it?"

The flat of the blade is cold against Will's stomach, tracing a winding line across his belly before it finds the waistband of his pants. The material that sat lovely against his slender hips is cut away, rich fabric tearing until it slips free of his legs to pool at his feet.

Another quick slap before he pulls Will against his neck again, voice soft against his ear.

"Or did you simply think yourself smarter than all the rest, failing to recognize your own insignificance at that particular moment?"

Will sobs, a dry thing, a weak little noise, and closes his eyes against Hannibal where he’s held.

It hurts him more than he can express, feeling the fabric fall away from his skin. Something he is no longer worthy of, something he was never worthy of, just a glistening shell to cover the weakness beneath. The paint peeled away from all the sins Will has committed, dry and cracked and broken.

Dorian Gray no more.

“I’m sorry.” he says softly. “I thought myself smarter,” he swallows, “rightfully smarter than most, there. Not you, never you.”

For a moment Hannibal is gentle. Allows it for himself, to simply feel Will shudder against him. Hardly prey, this, even with the blood on Will's hands - a terrified boy of seventeen, too clever for his own good, now shaking against him.

Something twists in Hannibal, snarls tight in his throat and he swallows it down.

He’ll never learn if Hannibal stays his hand now.

“Rightfully,” Hannibal repeats, after a moment, and he bends the boy back with a rough hand in his hair to bare his neck.

“You make dangerous presumptions, Will. You assume yourself to be more clever than most unless they prove themselves otherwise, but you let insinuations fall from your mouth in front of one of my smartest students, entirely unaware of who she was.”

Another slap, harder than the last, and a second, counting off two more in snarled hisses before he pulls away from the boy, to return the knife to the table.

“You imagine that your importance outweighs that of others, Will.”

A long pause, pushing his sleeves up higher.

“It does not.”

Will makes no answer beyond a long wail of pain, head ducked, teeth grit and blood dripping in slow, tacky strands from his lips. He has nothing else to say. Any technique that had kept him alive before this did not hold up around this man, this professional monster who passed through the world like a god, revered and admired, and utterly unknown.

Will is nothing near him.

And now nothing to him, either.

He wonders if Hannibal will make him suffer, if he will draw out the pain before killing him. He wonders if he will take his time with taking his fill of Will, taking what organs he feels matter.

He remembers the list, at the back of his mind, listed in that calm, beautiful voice.

Will presses his face against one of his arms, eyes closed tight and head throbbing in pain. And the next sound he makes is a sob, sticky with the beginning of tears.

Hannibal gathers the tattered suit from beneath Will’s feet. A thing of beauty now rent to pieces that he can no longer stand to look upon.

A substitute for the boy in front of him, whose body shakes with the effort of suppressing tears that already hitch his breath and choke rough in his throat.

The remains of fabric are tossed onto the table against which Hannibal leans, listening to the boy’s anguish made vocal. He sighs, relieved, at the tears that threaten to pour over. The storm that must break into downpour before the clouds can part again.

“Do you remember what I told you, during our first dinner together?”

The basement is silent, but for the hum of freezers filled with boys much like the one whose soft noises break that buzzing stillness.

“I told you that I had never considered teaching. That there were remarkably few who I felt could meet my expectations enough to warrant the necessity of creating space in my life for such a thing.”

Hannibal’s hands tense against the table behind him.

“My expectations were not met tonight, Will.”

“I can do better.” It’s a whine, a sound Will rarely lets escape him, even when he is in the most pain, scared, broken. He turns his head further into his arm and feels the wetness against his face when he opens his eyes.

He’s still shaking, hating that he is, that this weakness is coming through now, when Hannibal has him like this, when he will kill him and never think of him again. Will thinks of Alana, thinks of how she was genuinely a student of Hannibal’s, respected and admired and treated as a peer, as an equal.

She had earned that.

Will wonders if he ever could and if it even matters now that he never might.

He sobs again, turns his head further into his arm, smearing blood with tears against his skin.

Hannibal pushes off the table again, to circle around it. He turns the same switch as before, that lowers this particular hook enough that Will can find the ground beneath himself. He is weak, curling onto his knees as Hannibal lowers the hook still, allowing him to sit on the floor.

“You’ll forgive me,” Hannibal intones softly, “if I am unwilling to risk another evening such as this, on someone so ill-equipped to handle it.”

He approaches the boy, who does not look to him, and checks that his binds are secure in the hook with a quick shake. The touch is startlingly gentle as Hannibal pushes a hand back through Will’s hair, and then the touches - kind or unkind - withdraw entirely as Hannibal steps away. He studies his knuckles, sore from backhanding the boy, and looks up only when the boy’s sobs deepen.

“Without progress, I have no patience for teaching,” Hannibal remarks, voice tightening. “And even less for someone so persistently and willfully uninterested in learning the lesson in the first place.”

He resists the urge to lift him. To pick the huddled boy from off the floor and gather him close, to ask if the lesson is perhaps better understood now and hear the boy sob against him that it is. To free him from his bindings and carry him to bed, console him from his terror.

Hannibal clears his throat, and turns towards the stairs.

Will swallows, shakes his head, feeling tears and blood flick from his skin, land on the floor, and brings his knees up to his chest. He hears Hannibal walk away, hears him set his feet to the stairs and shudders.

“Hannibal!”

It’s frightened, little, but the steps stop.

Will swallows again. Cold and scared and shocked that he isn’t dead, that he has all his limbs, his skin, his breath within him still.

Tears still run freely down his face though he no longer makes a sound to accompany them. He wonders if his nose is running or bleeding, from the intensity of the blows aimed at him. He doesn’t care.

He blinks, pathetic and grubby and helpless as he is, and looks up.

“I’m sorry about the suit,” he whispers.

An insignificant thing in all but its meaning. The fabric didn’t matter, nor the cut nor the price, all material, all replaceable. But the gift, the act of giving, the soft way Hannibal had tied the tie, the way he had looked standing next to him… that’s gone, shredded and crumpled on the cold metal table.

And Will apologizes for that.

For all of the depravity in which Hannibal happily engages, the decadence and the death and the destruction, it is this act that brings a sharp snaring pain in his ribs. It is not in his nature to torture, to torment in such a way - even the death he grants is quick and generally painless.

He remembers the serene smile that met him in the mirror as Will studied himself. The feel of the boy beneath him beautiful and biting in the bathroom.

He looks at Will now, crumpled small and afraid on the floor, and his hand tightens against the railing on the stairs.

“As am I,” Hannibal responds softly.

The room goes dark, and the door closes behind him.

Will makes a sound, like a small animal in pain, and concentrates on the inverse shadow of Hannibal's silhouette imprinted behind his eyes until even that fades. 

-

Will isn't awake when the light comes on again, curled into a small ball beneath the hook that the night before had held him aloft. He'd twisted his way free of it some hours into the night, not attempting any further defiance after, exhausted and hurt enough to just let sleep take him.

He's shivering from the cold, but quiet. Hands still bound in front of him.

His face is a mess of blood and tear trails, all dried now. He looks younger.

A quick survey of the area shows that nothing has been touched. Even when Will freed himself, clever boy, he hadn’t moved from where he was left, legs still drawn up against his chest as Hannibal had last seen him.

Hannibal hums softly at this minor revelation, and crouches beside him. He strokes his hair from his face gently enough not to disturb him, but soon enough quick fingers loosen the knots at his wrists and he tosses the tie aside. One arm slides beneath Will’s neck, the other under his knees, and with a quiet grunt he hoists the boy from the floor and brings him close, silent still even as the boy wakes startled in his arms.

Will forms no words, but whimpers softly and, shaking, snares his arms around Hannibal’s neck.

Hannibal breathes a soft shushing sound into Will’s hair. Up the stairs from the basement, from the cellar, through the kitchen and up more stairs still to the bedroom.

Will trembles, realizing how cold it was with a warm body pressed close. He turns his head, mindless of the mess he is, and nuzzles close.

He wants to lose himself in Hannibal again, the strength and warmth and comfort of him. He finds he's not chastised, instead set into bed and covered with the warm sheets.

"Stay?" It's soft, a genuine request. A desperate need for that comfort and closeness, from the man who had caused him so much pain.

Will’s arms don’t relax from around Hannibal’s neck, and he reaches up to trace a thumb against the boy’s skin, still cool to the touch.

He does not answer, does not argue, but simply adjusts to shift into the bed beside him. Hannibal starts to draw Will towards him but the boy buries himself against Hannibal before the older man can move to make it so.

It troubles Hannibal, not only that he found himself so softened the night before, so desiring to comfort the boy after inflicting such horror, a necessary punishment, on him. No worse marks than any other given night between them left on the boy, restrained enough from causing him undue physical harm or death. More alarming still is that Hannibal spent most of the night entirely sleepless, reading to distract himself from the urge to go to the basement and bring the boy back out with him.

Hannibal pulls the boy tighter against him, ducking his head enough to kiss him. He stays here, legs twined and bodies pressed tightly, and his breath warms Will’s cheek.

“You suffer beautifully, sweet boy,” Hannibal whispers gently.

A soft noise, another gentle push to insinuate himself closer, and Will’s lips part Hannibal’s again, seeking heat there, as well, as the rest of his body trembles and returns to its normal temperature.

He thinks how he had, and would, suffer for him again, if it meant he wasn’t left alone, forgotten, forsaken, ignored.

“Your lessons are hard learned,” Will murmurs back, voice rough from lack of use, from crying and screaming the night before, from the way Hannibal had held him by the throat enough to leave marks, dark and unmistakable.

Will nuzzles against Hannibal now, pressed at every point their bodies can touch, takes the heat he can through the clothes Hannibal wears, from the blankets surrounding them. Will sighs, breathes in through his nose and winces - perhaps more damage there than just impact - before pulling back enough to see him.

“Teach me,” he says softly, eyes down to the man’s lips, just barely darkened by the blood from Will’s own. He brings his thumb up to wipe it away. “Make me learn it.”

Words he’s spoken before, said now as though a renewal of an oath. He rests his cold hand against Hannibal’s face a moment before pulling it back under the covers, over Hannibal’s shoulder.

“If your curiosity wanes, kill me.”

There is only gentleness in Hannibal’s hands now, only a stillness in his heart not as an act of control but by having his boy near him again, from hearing the hard-won awareness in Will’s voice. He smooths his curls, unkempt, back from his face and kisses his brow.

“I will,” Hannibal replies softly. An affirmation, as before, of their agreement.

He stirs again after a little while, and begins to rise from the bed but is snared by Will, all sprawling limbs and wide-eyed insecurity. Trauma, sustained fear still running cold in his veins.

“I wish to tend to your nose. Your lip,” Hannibal suggests. “Before they settle too long and it requires more work to heal them.”

Another curl of fingers through Will’s hair. “After that I will make you breakfast.” A pause, as Hannibal tries to convince himself that it’s only to restore the boy’s blood sugar, in a state of near-hypoglycemia after the sustained burn of adrenaline.

“Anything you like.”

This, hardly an offer of medical assistance, despite how Hannibal would comfortably lie to himself to make it so.

Will swallows, eyes searching Hannibal for a lie, before he presses his lips together and slowly lets him go.

He’s half asleep by the time Hannibal returns, wakes briefly as he’s cleaned, as his cuts are seen to and examined, but he sleeps once that’s finished, curled in a warm ball under the blankets where Hannibal usually sleeps, breathing soft and quiet against the sheets, just the top of his head and his eyes visible from under the blanket.

Will sleeps for most of the day.

When he rouses himself, he showers, finds his boxers from the night before, before the suit, before the party, and borrows one of Hannibal’s shirts from his closet.

He finds Hannibal in the study, and for the first time since he had let Will into his life, he allows him to help with dinner.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"Tacky?" Will asks softly, in English again._
> 
> _“Predictable,” Hannibal responds, but sounds no less charmed for it._
> 
> The more quiet moments between our favourite killers.
> 
> No warnings for this one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Before y'all get all up in arms about this, as someone who has deliberately and specifically learned a text in another language just to quote it I can guarantee you that it can be done, and does happen.
> 
> Latin and Greek were mentioned before, as Will's learned languages. He also has canonically Creole French, which he gets to show off later.

Will isn’t allowed to smoke in the house.

Despite Hannibal’s utter indifference about smoking in the car, the house is entirely out of bounds - for them both, now - when it comes to cigarettes.

So he wraps himself in Hannibal’s thick warm robe before venturing outside after midnight.

It’s still cold out, the threat of late snow but never a fulfilment of that. Will stands, bare feet in unlaced boots, body wrapped in the long robe that drags on the ground when he moves, cigarette between his lips and eyes far away.

He thinks back to the last scene he had shown Hannibal. He’d been careful to avoid blood on the carpet, careful to strike where he wouldn’t hit a major artery and paint another masterpiece over the ceiling and walls. He’d cleaned any evidence of his prints from anything he’d touched, had returned the bathroom to its previous state of chaotic neutral. Kept watch by the door, helped carry the body to the basement. And then had enjoyed a well-earned fucking against the couch, whimpering pleas and Hannibal’s name against the leather.

He exhales now, slowly, watches the smoke rise into the dark sky and dissipate. He knows when he returns Hannibal will not be sleeping. Up reading on his iPad, perhaps, or simply dozing, ready to pull Will back into a heavy, hot embrace when he climbs into bed.

It’s oddly domestic, yet somehow not sordid. No sickly sweet kisses in the morning, no small-talk in the evenings when Will was permitted to come over.

Just sharing space, sharing work, sharing time and pleasure.

Will stubs the cigarette out between his fingers and sets the butt into the ashtray resting on the arm of one of the glass and metal deck chairs before going back inside, closing the door, and making his way upstairs.

His boots he leaves at the end of the bed, the robe he discards over the chest just next to them, crawling over the covers and over Hannibal - iPad, predictably, keeping his attention for the moment - until he can press his teeth gently over the corner of the screen to direct Hannibal’s attention more appropriately.

It is a conceptual affection, each drawn to the idea of the other, first, and the physical provisions second. There is no overarching concern for the other's particular well-being, no desire to see them fulfilled and happy, joined instead in a comfortable selfishness in desiring to have their own satisfactions met, whether by sex or violence or conversation.

Removed entirely from the selfless devotion of love, a word whose understanding neither share.

Hannibal’s finger moves across the glass, scrolling further down the article in which he was engrossed before Will’s weight settled heavy and familiar over his thighs.

A pause, touch hovering over the screen, and he lifts his eyes only so high as Will’s teeth, caught against the corner of his tablet. The noise he makes is one of vague disapproval, but Will reads the false disinterest readily and his grin simply widens.

“Are you hungry?” Hannibal finally asks, meeting the boy’s blue eyes beneath an increasingly unruly mop of hair. “I was certain that the double portions to which you helped yourself earlier would be sufficient to render you relatively unconscious by now."

He scrolls down the page again, letting the boy's energy move over him. Excitable, eager enough to distract him from his reading. Most nights are spent near enough each other, with little to say between them, each content to read or rest until invariably, one draws nearer to the other and they exhaust themselves together.

Will smells of smoke, and Hannibal draws a slow breath to take in the heat of it, contrasting the cold air that he carried in with him.

"They are investigating leads, as to your most recent endeavor," Hannibal notes, eyes turned back towards the screen. "Which means they've nothing yet by way of evidence or suspects." A pause, recalling the boy's careful work - no alteration to his own methods and mannerisms of murder, his proclivity for knives and strangulation, the carnal exuberance that overtakes him - but merely a refinement of his practice, by way of Hannibal's guidance.

"Very good, Will."

Will just smiles, contented with the praise, shifts just enough to sit closer to Hannibal, higher up his thighs, pushing the iPad gently aside until Hannibal relents and sets his eyes on the boy properly.

It's rare Will wears much in the house at all, though he does make the effort - on occasion - to cover himself when they are in the main parts of the house. Now, he sits naked, bruises fading on skin in a way that makes Hannibal want to darken them again, or make new ones entire.

"I believe you once referred to me as 'insatiable'," Will reminds him, responding to Hannibal's earlier words, content to lean closer, head down, eyes up to watch Hannibal through the messy curls, until he can tilt his head and kiss the man properly.

"It's relatively early," he murmurs when he pulls back, the gentle suggestion clear enough. It amuses him that Hannibal tends to disapprove of Will taking care of his own pleasure when they're together - in the shower, in the bed alone - and then uses it, as he uses everything, to gently goad.

Hannibal closes the tablet with a long-suffering sigh, and draws his knees up behind Will to bring him nearer. Firm hands slide along the outside of his thighs, rubbing languidly as he chases the taste of smoke from Will’s mouth with his own.

Although Hannibal would take pains to teach Will that he does not live here, were he to ask or imply that he did, the boy is there more often than not. Trusted now to be here even when Hannibal leaves for work, although not yet granted keys to access on his own. On those nights that Will is away, hunting, Hannibal finds himself restless in the boy’s absence, occupying himself with lesser hobbies until the call comes with its purring notes of pleasures sought and found, and promises of more yet to come.

“And if I am sated?” Hannibal asks, amused. They both know it to be untrue in implication, especially as Hannibal’s hands slide inward over the boy’s skin. He finds a bruise on the inside of Will’s thigh, and presses his thumb against it enough to draw a quiet gasp, darkening Will’s cheeks with pain and pleasure both.

He does not touch higher than the inside of Will’s thighs, even feeling Will shift to rub against him, but instead skims his hands over Will’s chest, chasing bruises with firm presses of fingertips as though Will were an instrument, from which he draws notes in the form of little sounds of eager discomfort.

His favorite instrument, in fact, that thrills him with the music produced beneath his hands. A difficult one that just as often proves unwilling to be played and requires a more skillful touch to demand what he wants of it. A distinct pleasure in coaxing his desires from it, despite its inherent resistance.

Will squirms pleasantly in Hannibal’s hands, seeking more pressure at certain points, twisting from others. It's enough to create warm, pleasant friction between them, and, softly, Will moans.

He feels Hannibal's hands tighten around him briefly at the sound, a sadist, truly, who has refined with tastes to the level of art. Will bites his lip, brings up a hand to draw over Hannibal’s chest, through the warm hair there, the complete opposite of Will’s bare skin. He leans in to kiss along Hannibal’s jaw, down to the curve of his neck. Feels a smile tug there, feels his own answer.

For another moment, they are silent, then Will remembers, considers, and licks his lips.

"I nothing had, and yet enough for youth - joy in Illusion, ardent thirst for Truth," he recites softly, words not as practiced as the previous had been, not quite as drilled into his mind as he had forced the others, but easy enough to remember. Unlike Greek, though, Will only knows enough German to quote this, not to speak.

The language curls heavy from the boy’s tongue, dense and unyielding, and Hannibal presses his hands up either side of Will’s spine to keep him pressed near.

"Give unrestrained, the old emotion, the bliss that touched the verge of pain, the strength of hate, love's deep devotion. O, give me back my youth again." He breathes the words against Hannibal’s ear, rocks their hips together, relishes in being drawn close, held with the utter desire that sprung forth from the man when Will surprised him.

"Tacky?" he asks softly, in English again.

“Predictable,” Hannibal responds, but sounds no less charmed for it. He rests his head back against the headboard of the bed, chin tilted to bare his neck enough for Will to move across it, kissing open-mouthed against his skin.

He drags his fingernails through Will’s hair, pulling shivers from him. “But it begs the question - which of us is whom?”

Hannibal’s eyes close comfortably, hips rolling only gently to meet the boy’s rhythm atop him. “Although I knew myself to be damned far before you arrived, it is you who have ensnared me, spreading your temptation, your corruption, irresistible.” His hands slide higher up the inside of Will’s thighs, promisingly close.

Will makes a soft, deeply pleased sound.

"Did you force yourself on me, or I on you?" he recites, adjusting the words as best he can, smiling wide when it seems to have the desired effect.

"You really enjoy this, don't you," he asks, not unkindly. “Hearing me whisper words long ago written that few people know to quote? Hearing languages I've taught myself pour over your skin."

A gentle nuzzle against Hannibal’s neck, soft kisses there until his hair is snared again and Will recites again, unconnected passages for the moment, simply seeking to fit.

"Words are mere sound and smoke, dimming the heavenly light."

Hannibal watches Will bend and curve with his grip, long lashes falling against his cheeks as he sighs out poetry on every breath. His own eyes heavy-lidded now, lightless dark drawing up all the brightness that Will would offer him.

“Remarkable boy,” Hannibal murmurs softly. “Your mind is the most beautiful thing about you.”

He pulls him close to kiss the words from his mouth and press with more insistence up against him, grinding against the sinuous little thing perched in his lap. His touch is hot as it presses to Will’s cock, hard already, curling to squeeze across the head of it in promise of more.

“Who holds the devil, let him hold him well,” Hannibal recites softly. “He hardly will be caught a second time.”

Leaning forward now, to trap Will between his chest and his legs, he slips a hand down his back and underneath, to tease slow circles against his opening, too-soft touches across the bridge of skin there.

“Have you been practicing for me?” Hannibal’s ego awakens as though summoned by Will’s intellect, his gentle gyrations, the cleverness and violence held in slim fingers that curl through the hair on his chest. Reconsidering their roles, perhaps, with Will as the fearless seeker of illicit knowledge, and Hannibal as the proprietor of ill-gotten wisdom.

"I've been learning from you," Will responds gently, feeling his face flush warm with the proximity, with their touches. He can talk himself through any situation, speak as though he is older, more learned, different than what he is but here, Hannibal holds him in the palm of his hand.

He rocks his hips forward, hungry, greedy for it, and draws nails down Hannibal’s chest instead of gentle fingers.

"Your corruption, your temptation.” A soft moan, eyes closing and lips parting slack. "Piece by piece you take my soul from me and feed me something darker in its stead," Will purrs. "And in this I am insatiable."

The words bring down a cool shiver across Hannibal’s skin, a sigh breathed against the curve of Will’s collarbone in the release of it. Equal parts Faust and Mephistopheles between them, each complicit in their hunger for the knowledge that the other offers and for the beautiful blasphemies created between them.

Fingers are pressed to Will’s mouth, across his full and unfurling lips to part them and press against his tongue. Cheeks, blooming warmth as though innocence incarnate, hollow as Will sucks, little sounds vibrating across Hannibal’s fingertips before he withdraws them slowly, to leave the boy’s lips damp. One hand spreading him wide, the dampened fingers of his other hand press against Will’s opening to feel him part, and the arch of his spine in its decadence is as sweet as the poetry spilled like blood between them.

“That which issues from the heart alone, will bend the hearts of others to your own,” Hannibal murmurs against his mouth, before ensnaring it beneath his own in a rough kiss, pushing forward, that finds Will on his back and Hannibal heavy over him, between his thighs, fingers curling deeper inside.

“Poor son of Earth,” Hannibal whispers, focused on the moan that rises from the boy pinned under him. “How could you alone have led your life, bereft of me?”

No answer but another moan, deliberate, soft, the color from Will’s face now seeping down his throat, to his chest. He responds to Hannibal's words as Hannibal had responded to his, entire body attune to them, absorbing them, adoring them.

Rough tones over a rough tongue and Will’s legs spread wider, seeking, begging, needing this. He moans again, pushing down against Hannibal's fingers, relishing when he is allowed another, feeling the stretch, the tug within him, the perfect spot circled but never touched, always teased.

Always forcing Will to earn it.

"Hannibal," he gasps quietly, arching his back, turning his face away, flushed and lax in pleasure. “Please.”

This, Hannibal considers as he chases the boy’s mouth with his own, catches the corner of it, draws lingering kisses across his cheek and down his graceful neck and further still, the greatest corruption shared between them.

Nothing so simply understood as their carnal needs for fluids spilled wanton and decadent, nothing so easily remedied as the desire to feel the other’s thoughts and awareness mold against their own.

No, it’s this sordid desecration of Hannibal’s sense of reason, twisted into abandon by the pleading words of a mere boy. Though he will play at it, when the mood suits him, it alarms and delights Hannibal to know that he can deny Will nothing when the sweetness of his voice begs so gently.

Teeth snare the soft skin of Will’s belly as he moves lower, fingernails grazing across his chest, over sensitive nipples, down to grab the boy’s knees and subdue him, holding him firmly in place as he passes his lips across the boy’s twitching length to instead press against the spot pried open with teasing fingers moments before.

Will bucks up, a breathless sound escaping him, pulling his chest up like a puppet on a string, hands grabbing behind him for an anchor and finding just messy sheets.

Another soft repetition of the man’s name, worshipful, needy, demanding of more.

This undoes Will; draws the merciless claws of shivers over his skin, pulls his voice taut and weak, takes down all walls and inhibitions. He trembles, feels Hannibal’s fingers tighten to grip his legs, and gasps out a word - something foreign, common, he no longer knows.

One word follows another, and Will is reciting again, shaking and cooled with a thin sheen of sweat, cock hard against his stomach, twitching for attention with every torturous press of Hannibal’s tongue.

"Please, please, please fu-" Will swallows, whines softly in need, bucks his hips even as he flushes darker, so close to a word he knows he'll regret, weighing up the pros and cons of a completed utterance. 

"-oh," he sighs, biting his lip on another lilting whimper.

Hannibal hums soft against Will’s skin when he resists the urge to curse, mouth spreading warm against him, tongue pressing in as he spreads the boy wider still to reward him, to feel him squirm. Falling apart at the seams from the prideful preening moments before, now he seems only his years, rather than beyond, twisting and writhing full of life and sound.

He presses the flat of his tongue up higher, across the smooth skin and along the join of Will’s thigh to his groin, his own pulse starting to raise now with the taste of Will so intimate on his tongue.

A further reward, now, for Will’s good behavior, a temptation as well as Hannibal draws his parted lips and the tip of his tongue along the length of Will’s cock, sighing pleased as it twitches beneath his mouth.

“Recite for me, Will,” Hannibal coaxes him, the reward evident as he looks up the length of Will’s body, hands curled around his thighs. A pause, and a slight smile, bemused as ever at the prospect of making the boy’s life harder than strictly necessary, to fluster him and see him whine and writhe in frustration.

“In Latin.”

Will stutters, catches his breath and presses a palm against his eyes so he can’t see Hannibal between his legs, looking up, expectant. Gorgeous eyes and a predator’s grin. He swallows, parts his lips with his tongue and turns his head.

“And if I can’t?” he breathes, feeling more than seeing Hannibal smile wider at that, at the apparent admission of failure where he had asked this of him. Will shudders as cool fingers draw over the length of him, linger on the head before moving away entirely.

“Rewards are only worth what you earn of them, Will,” Hannibal replies, almost sad at the prospect, his words drawing soft air over Will’s cock, up higher over his navel.

Will whimpers, arching up, demanding and begging with nothing more than sounds and sweet, gentle twists of his form. When, predictably, he wins no favor, he parts his lips again, arches his neck back and speaks.

With Latin he is most practiced, having studied it at school and outside it when it became apparent that his skill lay beyond the simple tasks that school set him. He recites the words like the poetry they are, soft and lyrical, gentle and in perfect meter. And for this, after a stanza completed, Will lowers his hand and ducks his head, to see what reward his words had earned him.

There is a lingering silence as he finishes the stanza of the Aeneid, the most readily memorized verse in mind, and Hannibal meets Will’s eyes with nothing less than absolute surprise. Clearly he had not expected the boy to be able to do it, assuming that Greek and German would be the admittedly remarkable extent of it.

“Dante wrote that it was Virgil who lead him into hell,” Hannibal responds, an echo of their earlier conversation, and the brief smile that appears is utterly genuine, nearly a laugh on the sigh that he tilts down against the boy’s cock. He releases a thigh to grasp Will’s twitching length, leaking hard now, and press it past his lips.

The taste, the weight of Will against his tongue yields a curious sound as Hannibal’s eyes settle on him again, to count the long seconds that his back bends bridging from the bed, marking the moments before Will moans. He keeps one hand wrapped around him, squeezing slow strokes, and the other curls nails into his thigh, red lines lingering in the wake.

Will’s gasps come quick and close, a panting of pleasure he can’t hide nor wants to. All his senses are in overdrive, feeling every breath, every linger of lips against him, of hot tongue and teeth gentled. He feels the blood rush through his veins, feels the way his lungs flutter on unfinished breaths, feel how he sticks to the sheets when he shifts.

He knows, relishes, that he will have bruises from Hannibal’s fingers against his thigh. Will curls his leg around Hannibal’s shoulder, grins when he’s allowed to do the same with the other, and delights in feeling his hips lifted from the bed as Hannibal moves, curls his hands back behind himself so he can rest up on his shoulders alone, head ducked to watch, eyes barely open.

He has not been told to resist orgasm, not been told to wait and endure, but Will makes himself regardless, a sweet pain in feeling the cliff so close and knowing he could take a running leap at any moment.

Hannibal takes him deeper, moans, and Will makes a noise in a voice that isn’t his own. High and desperate and filled with the murmured pleas for release.

This time he can’t bite back his curse and he doesn’t care - he’s mindless with pleasure, writhing and trembling under Hannibal’s capable mouth, taking his earned reward.

When he cums, Will laughs again, a soft pleased thing, spreading his lips wider, showing white teeth and the tip of his tongue before he swallows and leaves his mouth slack to catch his breath instead.

The sound is one of Hannibal’s favorites, a more satisfying sensation than even Will shuddering and coiling beneath him, than even Will’s release hot against his tongue as he savors it, swallows it down and sucks for a moment more merely to watch the boy arch against him. The sweet little laugh, absolute abandon in his delight, tugs at something in Hannibal’s chest and he welcomes it, relishes it and keeps it near.

A sigh, breathless, as he lets Will’s softening length fall from his lips and traces a thumb across them, catching a drop before it can trail to his chin, and tasting this from his finger as well.

He does not disrupt the boy’s legs, caught at the ankles around him, but moves between them to settle over him again. A firm slap against the boy’s thigh in belated punishment for his swearing, but followed by a faint grin before he leans in to kiss Will, letting him taste himself there, tongues twining in a hunger grown ravenous to be inside his boy again.

One firm arm circles around Will, lifts him from the bed to sit upright as Will’s legs slide lower around his waist. Hannibal is brutally hard, growling low against Will’s mouth, and he adjusts his legs so that Will is astride him again, cock aching stiff between the boy’s legs.

“And now, Will?” Hannibal asks, kisses snaring between each word when Will wraps his arms loose around Hannibal’s neck. “Are you sated?”

Will grins, enjoying the closeness, the playful brutality between them when there is nothing between them but pleasure, at the moment. And slowly, deliberately he shakes his head.

“Are the wicked ever sated?” Will asks, pleased, warm, bites Hannibal’s lip when the other moves close enough again.

“No,” Hannibal responds when his lip is freed, nuzzling alongside Will’s nose. “Especially when the devil keeps them wanting.”

He lays back, bringing the boy atop him, as they began, thighs spread to allow a languid shifting of hips, head tilted against his shoulder and blue eyes focused heavy-lidded on the man beneath him. Hannibal slips a hand beneath him again, to tease him open, to press his cock against him, and murmurs, amused, “Latin again, I think.”

It’s very early morning, Will doesn’t know how far dawn is but it had been utterly silent when he’d gone outside, no birds from the night anymore, none yet for the morning. The curious hour where everything sleeps, except the predators.

There is no rest for the wicked either.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"I want to watch you kill him," Will says softly, nuzzling the warm skin through the shirt before kissing there and obediently returning to the club._
> 
> Will takes Hannibal hunting.
> 
> WARNINGS FOR THIS CHAPTER: drinking, drug use, public sex, physical abuse, threesome, copious amounts of blood and its inappropriate use

Hannibal let Will dress him for this.

He stood stalwart as Will sifted through his closet, muttering disapproval about this and that, until he finally settled on a button-down and slacks. Insistent that Hannibal not actually button all the buttons, equally chagrined by Hannibal trying to fold the sleeves rather than simply ruche them to his elbows, it was only when he loosened the older man's hair into a casual sweep across his eyes that Hannibal finally made a sound of dismay, far milder in tone than what he actually felt.

Will, effortlessly ignoring the sound, as he does most times, rewarded him with a lingering kiss, just deep enough to allude to a promise that it would be worth Hannibal's suffering to trust him in this and play along.

His territory, his evening, his rules.

Hannibal did not complain again, but feels a burgeoning doubt as they approach Will's chosen venue for the evening. A bracing rumble of bass from the windowless building, the velvet rope in front festooned with an array of boys and girls far closer to Will's age than Hannibal's. All lovely in their own rights, loud and vibrant with overpowering youth, but none so effortlessly as Will.

Hannibal focuses on him, instead of the apprehension he feels tightening the corners of his mouth, and Will leans close, murmurs against his ear words Hannibal barely hears.

_Choose anyone you want._

_We’ll have a feast tonight with him._

When they reach the velvet rope, Will pours himself over it, leans close to the bouncer, smiles. He says something that gets lost in the bass beat around them and the rope is lifted. Will drags soft fingers over the man’s chest as he passes him, other hand behind him to snag Hannibal’s sleeve and pull him in.

Within, there is a short corridor, a place to store bags that neither of them have, and then an open floor with a balcony surrounding that covers 3 of the 4 walls. The music is controlled in the middle of the chaos, on a podium just barely above the dancers themselves.

To Hannibal’s surprise, there are more men his age inside than there had been waiting. Some are alone, others with beautiful, young things with skirts too short and makeup too bright. Will presses back against Hannibal to brace him and himself, turns his head to speak into his ear.

“Everything in here fits my demographic, and more than enough to suit your tastes.” He bites gently just under his ear and moves his hips in time to the music against him, a teasing grin up at Hannibal when the other looks down.

“Choose a boy to fuck, a man to fuck me… the end result is the same.”

He steps away enough to receive his expected slap for the curse, apparently utterly unabashed at such a show happening in public. Though, with the people in the club around them, Hannibal can understand why it wouldn’t be seen as unusual. A few of the kids wear collars, and more than a few of those are tethered to someone’s hand.

Hannibal does not raise a hand to him, although his fingers twitch in response to the misbehavior, and his head tilts just discernibly at the suggestion that he would do so.

“Two,” he responds, taking in the expanse of the space, the bodies within it all in various states of display or undress.

It’s not often that Hannibal feels so entirely out of his element, and even rarer that he would ever consider venturing to a place like this. Grateful at least that his chance of encountering someone who knows him here is virtually nonexistent, he works a looseness into his shoulders. Adapting, in inches, to this new environment.

With more curiosity than desire yet, he snares an arm around Will’s waist and pulls the boy back against him, head tilting against his, mouth against his ear.

“A drink, perhaps.” A mild enough suggestion, accepting Will’s gyrations with a secondary interest to the scene around them. “Whatever you would suggest.”

Will hums, pleased, and turns, twisting from Hannibal’s grip to snare his hand and pull him through the crowd to the bar in the far corner.

As far as alcohol goes, the place isn’t devoid of choice, nor are the choices particularly horrific for Hannibal’s palette, though perhaps not as refined as he would like. Will orders them two bourbons, no ice, and turns to Hannibal with a look of childish want to get him to pay for them.

It’s all an act, a slowly building vignette for others to accept and not question.

Will wears dark pants today that gleam in a way as to suggest that at least part of them is leather, or should be. His shirt is a thin thing, just too small for him. The boots are his usual, up to his shins and magically hanging on without the laces being remotely tight around his slim legs.

The drinks come and Will downs his without bothering to savor it, exhaling harshly and laughing before pressing himself to Hannibal’s side, eyes up, one hand snared gently in his shirt as he presses to Hannibal so close that the man can feel every inch of him.

“Another?”

There is a particular abandon to it, as Hannibal allows himself to be moved this way and that, to be pressed against, ensnared by the boy at his side - his alone, Hannibal knows, and the thought brings him a momentary peace to soothe the utter lack of control that gathers fierce in his stomach.

Hannibal signals for two more drinks, and slides another bill across the counter without bothering to check the size of it.

“Something nicer,” he remarks to the bartender, who’s happy to do so in exchange for the substantial tip involved.

He’s still turning over the cheap bourbon burn across his lips when the next arrives, and though it is of marginally better quality, he follows Will’s lead and downs it quickly. Whiskey warmth spreading quick, loosening him enough that he doesn’t resist when Will tugs him away from the bar.

Attentions torn now, between the movement of Will leading him through the club, the lithe lines of his body brought to sudden sharpness by the deliberately snug clothing, and the sundry assortment of bodies around them. Slender, lovely things scarcely clad. Older men and women more elegantly presented but with an undercurrent of debauchery that the younger ones only play at emulating.

And they, fingers snared, above them all.

Wolves, severe and beautiful, amongst sheep who know not what moves in their midst.

“What do you do here?” Hannibal finally asks, tugging Will back to him when there’s room enough to do so. He draws a breath as Will slides sinuous against him, and allows himself to turn his nose into the boy’s hair, breathing him in. A possessive gesture, noted by several pairs of eyes that fall upon them.

Will hums, bites his lip as he rolls his body against Hannibal’s again, grinning over the older man’s shoulder to one of the young boys who catches his eye, hungry and envious.

"Dance," he lists, bringing his hands up over Hannibal’s shoulder, tug his hair lightly. “Drink." He brushes their lips together, relishes in the greedy way Hannibal’s hands slide down his body, splay against it.

"Fuck," Will laughs, leaning in to add "three," before Hannibal can. He nods towards one of the walls that seems to be undulating with the bodies against it. No sounds heard over the music, but the expressions on their faces - those allowed to face the crowd - say enough.

"Get high," Will continues, biting his lip on a gentle sound when Hannibal turns Will so his back is to him. Will arches lithe to rub against him as around them the bodies continue their rhythm, one body, one pulse.

"Hunt,” he adds, catching the eye of an older man across the floor, smiling sweetly at him.

"Sodom and Gomorrah, Hannibal, in their purest forms."

Hannibal catches the look, one of so many directed in passing towards Will, only peripherally. He does not yet turn towards it, noting that the sensation of jealousy that normally vines through his ribs at such a thing does not appear in this place.

Unfamiliar territory rendering previous responses untenable, unnecessary.

Hannibal meets the man’s eyes as well now, a look that must appear dangerous enough to cause him to look away, and Hannibal tilts his mouth towards Will’s ear again.

“Does it please you,” he asks, “to think of being used in such a way?” His hand spreads across Will’s chest, over the thin material, and catches beneath his jaw to tip the boy’s head back against his shoulder. “Would it satisfy for you for someone else to lay their hands on you, while I watch?”

Marking his territory now, as he turns Will’s grin against his own mouth, not kissing him, but only speaking in low menace against it. Threats and promises, forever entwined.

“Or would you prefer we both do so, until I tire of him and snap his neck while he’s still inside of you?”

Will moans, the sound loud only between them, but hardly drawing attention from anyone but the closest dancers. He bites his lips, feels his cheeks color, and rubs his ass harder against Hannibal behind him.

"Both," he gasps, one hand up to curl around the back of Hannibal’s head, the other down to splay against his hip.

"Think of it," he groans, clearly thinking himself. “On my knees over you, your cock down my throat,"

He bites his lip as Hannibal ducks his head to suck a mark against his neck. Nearby, another man catches a glance, lingers.

"Nnn - legs spread so wide as he fucks me, as your hand holds my cock, as you forbid me to cum..."

Will’s words hitch when he feels Hannibal’s teeth, harsh and bruising against him, and he laughs, biting his lip again.

"Oh, master won't you let me play?"

Unbearably petulant, worth a slap in itself without the aid of Will’s dirty mouth, and Hannibal relishes it, takes his time marking his boy as Will twists against him, lips slack and eyes barely open. He knows his words carried to those ears that perked to listen, and now he waits, will let Hannibal choose.

Hannibal’s fingers press harder against his jaw, meeting his mouth in another kiss.

“Four.”

His hand loosens to slide through the boy’s hair, a gentler touch but not by much, and another soft murmur is pressed to Will’s ear as Hannibal watches those watching them.

“Whomever touches you more than I just have will die.”

A kiss is swept across the boy’s brow before Hannibal releases him, only grudgingly, following Will’s lead and letting his voice carry just enough to be heard by those nearby.

“Go play,” he allows, attention focused on Will alone. “Stay where I can see you.”

There is an avarice in his look and Hannibal knows well enough that, human nature being predictable as it is, it will make them both more desirable. The controlling words, the covetousness of his body language around the boy is not entirely false, but merely amplified, and he knows that Will sees it clearly enough for what it is, delighting in the game that Hannibal has agreed to play with him.

“Bourbon,” Hannibal suggests to a passing waiter as he finds and settles into a couch, arms spread along the back of it to watch Will from a distance now, entirely curious to see him unleashed.

Will relishes in the attention, can feel it on him from Hannibal, from countless other eyes that simply pass him by or linger. He knows, can feel that power he commands with the weight of Hannibal’s stare, his words, his promise against him.

He goes, instead, not to an older man but a younger boy, one who had been watching him as he’d danced with Hannibal, shown himself off, shown his ownership. Now he wears it in blood beneath his skin, a rough round mark.

They exchange a few words, Will’s arm around the boy, head turned to whisper in his ear as he passes him something, and receives something smaller in turn. He pulls back enough to kiss him, a deep hungry thing, and the boy’s hands flex then splay and curl around Will in front of him.

Hannibal counts. One. Two. 

Seconds upon seconds before Will releases the boy and steps away. Not long enough to warrant a kill, obviously not worthy of Will’s time.

He returns to Hannibal, slides into his lap.

“If you want to play properly,” he murmurs, tugging the little napkin wrap open to reveal two pills, little, in the middle. He grins, takes one dry, before placing the other on his tongue and pulling Hannibal in close to kiss him, pressing the pill between them for the other to take.

Hannibal tenses in sudden resistance, a survival instinct triggered acutely by being dosed with something unknown. Had Will not taken one first, the reaction would have been more severe by far, but even as he feels the pill work down his throat his eyes narrow.

His hand passes through Will’s hair to hold against the nape of his neck again, fingers pressing against the bruise freshly sucked and bitten into his skin.

“What was it?” Genuine menace now, watching the wide-eyed pleasure writ across Will’s face with waning patience.

Will laughs, and it’s not the warm sound usually issuing from his throat, but something deeper, darker still.

“X.” Will replies, pleased with himself, pupils already wide as he watches Hannibal from how he’s held. He forces his smile smaller, down to something genuine, and tilts his head so he can meet Hannibal’s eyes properly.

“Trust me.”

It’s soft, a genuine request, and for a moment he wonders if Hannibal will forsake the entire evening and leave, now, without a backward glance. Perhaps he should have warned him but… it’s something he’s taken before, something he knows the safety of - he knows the kid, the look of the pills, the taste of them on his tongue.

He waits, a beat, two, before leaning up to kiss Hannibal again, fingers in his hair, moaning, pleased, when the kiss is returned. He’ll undoubtedly add to his debt with the surprise but for now, it’s allowed. He’s allowed, and he relishes the feeling of a warm palm against the inside of his thigh.

When he pulls back he sighs, pleased.

“Now,” Will licks his lips, presses their foreheads together. “Keep your eyes on me.”

Hannibal’s fingers tighten, just a little, against Will’s thigh before he can move away.

“How could I not?” he responds. A nearer nuzzle against him, a harsh kiss stolen from Will before he finally releases him, watching as he slides away and light slicks against the smooth lines of his pants.

Hannibal assures himself, lips pursing in faint displeasure, that it would take more than this to unsettle him, to destabilize the fortifications he’s spent decades erecting. He’s familiar enough with the substance, medically, to know that there are worse choices for Will to have made, though he comforts himself in knowing that the boy will be punished for this anyway. Easing beneath the steady thrum of music, beneath the shifting lights, Hannibal settles back into the couch again.

Perhaps, he considers distantly, he might even enjoy it.

The thought is immediately followed by a soft snort, heard by none but himself, as Hannibal is brought another bourbon, having tipped enough to merit the service to where he sits.

Will takes to the floor almost carefully, gracefully weaving between undulating bodies, brushing some, avoiding others. He doesn’t seek - he becomes a pull, a source of his own gravity.

And he draws.

It starts with a few people, just a boy here and there, a girl.

Will dances hypnotically. To say it's beautiful would be inaccurate. Beauty exists in rumba and tango. It exists in the waltz and foxtrot. The way Will moves is sexual. It's enticing and seductive and Hannibal cannot take his eyes off him.

He notices that Will quietly and gently lets the girls go, pushing them from the pool of choices with unspoken signs they read too well. Then the boys. One by one they get a moment, two, in Will’s arms, against his body, but they are tools, implements to draw the others, the older men, masters and singles looking for a boy.

Will catches the eyes of three, grins when they come closer, drawn without words to this beautiful, ethereal creature who dances like a fae; impossible to ignore or stop dancing with once you begin.

The music changes and Will’s smile turns sleepy, needy, his body turning, bending, opening to the advances. Hannibal watches, entranced, as Will finds himself between two men, all three pressed so close Will’s panting from it; tilting his head back against one, allowing a hand between his legs from the other. 

A sacrifice. Willing. Obedient. 

The perfect lure. 

The first distortions of the drug become apparent, felt first and only then followed by a recognition of their cause. The music curls to soften its harsh edges, a low pulse of bass like a heartbeat beneath it. Hannibal feels warm, tugging the collar of his shirt just to loosen it, attention fixed on the preternatural insinuations of Will's body between two men who may as well be faceless for their misfortunate misstep in being drawn to this particular boy.

Hannibal sucks in a sharp breath as a hand curls between Will's legs, palming up the front of his sleek pants and across his belly, beneath his shirt. He feels a stir at the imagined sensation, of receiving such a touch and touching Will at once, and feels his pulse quicken.

For a moment, he wonders if this is how Will must feel in his acute awareness of others, dueling realities of experience - his own overlapping with those around him.

Another sip of bourbon, sweeter than before, warmth easing the itch Hannibal feels building beneath his skin. A need to move, to act, to paint the floors with the blood of men who think they have right to touch that boy, his boy - cover the walls with it and finally snare Will to fuck him in the aftermath of gore until his tears mingle with it.

Another deep breath, as the man beside Hannibal on the couch speaks, splintering the images behind his eyes.

"Is he yours?"

Hannibal does not turn to face the man, has already taken him in from the moment he settled there. He makes an acknowledging sound, and sips his drink.

The man nods, bemused, and leans back into the couch as well. "You're a better man than me. If I had one that pretty I wouldn't let him near this place."

"No?" Hannibal asks, feigning the most minimum interest he can get away with, as his voice rubs rough against his nerves and further ruins Hannibal's brief reverie.

"Not if he was going to act like that," the man snorts. He's dressed well enough, a polished and pressed business casual, and Hannibal wonders what brings someone so straight-laced to a place like this one. He could ask himself the same thing really, and smiles faintly at the thought.

As if on cue, a lovely red-haired girl settles into the couch between the two men, wide eyes darkened by drug-expanded pupils.

"The pretty ones, you've got to train them hard. They know they're pretty and it makes them headstrong," the man continues, turning a finger in the girl's hair. She smirks, pleased by the compliments.

 _Pretty pretty pretty_ \- the words pull at his skin like fishhooks and Hannibal sees blood, coagulating thick against cheap linoleum, running thick beneath his feet.

Hannibal inclines his head in thanks for the unnecessary advice, but as he does so, time shifts, a speeding sensation. The girl is leaned towards by the man, a whisper exchanged and both smile behind open masks, and Hannibal draws a breath as he misses a beat of time and suddenly feels her mouth against his neck.

Soft, painfully soft, her hair like silk against his cheek and Hannibal allows a resonant sigh. He tips his head to the side, to give the girl more room, and finds Will again on the dance floor, laughing between the two men who have surrounded him, and his eyes narrow.

It's comfortable here, warm and heavy on the couch with this girl pressed against him, ready to do whatever the other man would ask of her. Procuring, Hannibal notes, with her as bait. He casts a sidelong look to the man.

No predator, here. Hannibal expects the man probably has very little stomach for violence. Seeking a trade instead, perhaps.

The moment passes.

The grinding, sandpaper-over-skin need for movement brings Hannibal to stand, passing off the remainder of his bourbon to the girl left blinking on the couch.

"If you'll excuse me," he murmurs, polite even now as he pushes his sleeves up again where they had fallen and slides a hand back through his hair. A warm sensation spreads at the touch of his own hand, like a sudden hot shower cascading down his spine, fingernails curled against his scalp.

Distracting, Hannibal decides, with an unheard hum of dismay at the drug’s effects, and focuses his attentions more narrowly rather than attempt to spread them across the room.

His gaze settles on Will, and his companion. The latter currently has an arm wrapped snugly around the former's middle, one hand sliding up to tease a nipple through Will's shirt, trailing blithe kisses over the same space where Hannibal's mouth had pressed bruises - some time ago, recently, a long time ago.

Many times, Hannibal reminds himself, through the addled thoughts.

Disapproval tightens the corners of Hannibal’s mouth as he pulls himself closer, only to see that the man has pressed his leg between Will's thighs, and that Will is dancing wanton against the friction.

Another lapse of time and there are soft curls of hair between Hannibal’s fingers, twisted until a particular gasp raises from Will. The other man starts to withdraw, hands up in deference, but he answers the man with a word whose danger is lost to all but Will.

"Stay."

A hesitation, brief, the man clearly wanting to stay, the way Will rests pliant and panting, flushed and hard against Hannibal now - a toy on display, vulnerable and perfect. He steps up again, takes the invitation as Hannibal’s eyes slide away, down, to look at Will instead.

His eyes are barely blue beneath the thick lashes, pupils wide with drug and lust. He blinks, slowly, lips drawing up in a smile and arches his back, hard, to press his lips to Hannibal’s neck, a gentle kiss - familiar, needy.

More soft sounds, too soft, really, to be heard over the music but Hannibal has honed his hearing to concentrate just on Will, just the hitched little breaths as the man in front of him pinches Will’s nipples to peak, the whimper when it tilts from pleasant to painful, the shuddering gasp as the hands relent, finally, to slide over Will’s front, down to slip under his shirt again and draw warm fingers over the skin.

The man touches as Hannibal lets him, holding Will against himself as his hands slip lower, too, over Will’s slim hips, down the front of his pants where Will is hard against his palm, a mewling plea rolled against him from parted lips as Hannibal strokes him there, gentle, teasing, watching the response write itself over Will’s face in that dark flush Hannibal so adores.

The music changes again, perhaps another distortion of time, and Will writhes between them, lips parted on a smile befitting the emotion after which the drug in his system is named, one arm up around the back of Hannibal’s head, holding him close, the other out tugging tight against the collar of the shirt the other man wears, pulling him closer as well.

“Greedy, wanton boy,” Hannibal murmurs, nuzzling against Will’s hair, letting his eyes close as he experiences the entire sensation of Will, the youthful exuberance of him, the clean sweat, the pleasure, the spicy arousal that has always brought Hannibal olfactory bliss.

In front of them, the man finally laughs, a low sound that would be dangerous if danger wasn’t staring at him with disinterested maroon eyes.

“He get away from you?”

Hannibal smiles, a slowly widening thing, before he turns his head and bites gently against Will’s ear, lip briefly twitching in a snarl when the boy makes a sound of pain and rolls his hips back against him.

“He tried.”

Will laughs, pulls the other man closer, uses his weight as leverage to push himself to stand properly, arching his back to keep contact with Hannibal behind him.

“Master said I could play if I stayed where he could see me,” he confides, tone low but younger, an adjustment of his usual carriage to present this perfect picture, a lure the man could not refuse if he tried.

“Did he?”

Another slow gaze from dark eyes, one entirely lost on the man too blinded by lust to see anything but Will in front of him, lip between his teeth, hair messy in his eyes, still wide with the hormones roiling in his system.

“What would you do with him?” Hannibal asks, suddenly, stilling his movement and holding Will against him to still his. The rest of the crowd moves without them, around them, like river over a rock. Organic, natural, human. The man’s eyes widen, pupils blow with possibilities.

“Fuck,” he swallows. “I’d see what that mouth could do.”

“‘The gates of Hell are open night and day; smooth the descent and easy is the way’,” Will recites softly, the Latin lost to the man in a flurry of bass beats. Hannibal doubts that’s quite what the man had meant, though he himself ducks his head to kiss under Will's jaw, in praise, familiar heat coiling in his groin.

“What else?” Hannibal asks.

He lifts a hand to Will’s cheek, keeping the boy secured against him to feel every undulation move like music against his body. He brings a thumb across Will’s mouth and Will chases the touch with his lips, parting them to curl his tongue around Hannibal’s finger to bring it into his mouth, moaning obscenely as he hollows his cheeks to suck.

A promise of things to come, absorbed eagerly by the man who watches the display.

“We could share him,” the man responds, without looking to Hannibal although it’s him that the man addresses now. “Take turns fucking him, let him suck us both off.” Deferring, in some primal way, to Hannibal’s evident dominance of the boy, knowing innately that any acceptance would have to come from Hannibal rather than the decadent little thing writhing eager between them.

“You want to fuck me?” Will grins, and Hannibal brings his palm across the boy’s cheek, hard enough to sting. Hard enough that the sensation makes Will’s entire body shiver delightfully, and the man watching suddenly grins.

“You like it rough.”

Will nods, biting his lip in a flushed grin.

“Very,” Hannibal acknowledges on Will’s behalf, a note of exhaustion in it as he braces his hand beneath Will’s chin to lift it upward. The man presses against him, pinning the boy between them, and takes the offer to kiss him by burying his tongue in Will’s mouth until Will is forced to lean back against Hannibal, who watches narrowly.

A tension spiralling pleasurably up his spine, coiling fierce, his resistances lowered enough that Hannibal can feel his seams splitting in time to the music, a pulse felt through the bass in the floor and through the press of his hips against Will and in the snarl that clenches his teeth.

“So do I,” the man responds, grinning, blithely unaware of the menace emanating from Hannibal. He’s not unpleasant to look at, a handsome quality about him that puts him above many here, but nothing by compare to the two he’s courting.

Hannibal hums against Will’s hair, releasing his jaw to instead press his hand against Will’s stomach, firm with the gyrations that he doesn’t seem to be able to stop even if he so desired, and he catches the man’s eyes just long enough to inform him, “He bruises beautifully.”

Tearing a little further now, the monster pulling at its chain with a rattling snap as Will turns his head enough to reveal the darkening bruise bitten into the curve where his neck meets his shoulder, and the man sighs hard, lust blinding him to the genuine amusement blooming in Will’s eyes as he catches Hannibal’s attention with his own.

“We’ll make new ones then,” the man agrees.

A genuine pleasure, now, as Will purrs German against Hannibal’s ear again. “And so the devil has you, and your soul is infallibly lost.”

“Enough,” Hannibal sighs harshly, himself stirred as much as Will now, at the promises spoken and those understood. He forces the man to meet his eyes and nods towards the couch where Hannibal sat before. “A moment more. Wait for us. Imagine what will come of the evening in our brief absence.”

The words are curiously out of place here, where crudities abound, but enough to intrigue further as the man nods. He parts his lips with his tongue, unwilling for a moment to lose sight of them, to lose the opportunity presented, but he defers again in knowing that his place here is between them, above Will but beneath Hannibal in the unspoken social hierarchy of the moment.

“I’ll get my coat,” he responds, stealing another kiss from Will before he does as Hannibal instructs.

Will scarcely has time to open his mouth to ask, to chastise Hannibal perhaps for breaking the rhythm of the moment, but Hannibal snares Will roughly by the wrist before his protest can be heard.

Movement in the music, in the humanity around them, in the floors beneath Hannibal’s feet as he parts the crowd towards the darkened hallways that spiral off the main area. Fewer bodies here, but more closely entwined, their gasps seeming to match in time to the music that further intoxicates Hannibal as he finds a place with pairs of bodies arm-length away from them on either side, and pins Will to the wall with a hand against his throat.

“Now you,” he growls low against Will’s mouth. “What would you do with him? Tell me.”

Will almost mewls with delight, squirming beneath the touch in the most pleasing way.

"I'd kneel," he breathes, those beautiful eyes down to watch how close Hannibal is, denied his own movement to bring them closer by the hand pinning him. "Take it. He probably wants me to gag, choke and beg and whimper, so I will."

Will moans, hands up to tug against Hannibal’s shirt as he steps closer, hips grinding down against Will’s. 

"I'm gonna cum," he gasps, already so close, body over-stimulated by rough foreign hands, by the beat of the music that has him wanting to move more dance faster, never stop.

"You're not," Hannibal growls, though he can feel the telltale trembling in Will’s limbs already. It's exhilarating, having so much power over the boy so publicly, having it met with lust and lingering looks instead of horror and concern.

"What else?" 

Will’s lips part, teeth gritted beneath in a dark, delighted grin.

"I'd let him fuck me raw,” he groans, and it's enough for Hannibal, enough to pull back and strike him again, to Will’s utter delight, before hoisting the boy up against the wall, one hand to the front of his pants as Hannibal kisses him, tastes the remains of his drink against Will’s parted lips, tastes the man they will kill, together.

His hands make quick work of the button, tug the zipper down and slide inside to curl against the boy’s ass, teasing his opening with rough fingers. Will’s hands scrabble against Hannibal’s back, settle in his hair, legs curled tight around him, face nuzzling him with a sick sort of affection.

"I'm gonna cum," he sobs again.

"You're not, Will," Hannibal warns. "Not until I tell you to do so."

The boy's trembling, grinding, twisting against him forces Hannibal to push him back harder against the wall. Few enough even pay them mind, let alone linger in watching beyond a passing appreciation for the sight. He rolls his hips in response to the squirming boy wrapped around him and groans low in his ear as a rough finger breaches his entrance, just a little, enough to torment.

"Shit," gasps Will, and he's met with another brutal slap, laughing as his head follows the movement of it.

Wolves among sheep, free to play and to hunt without hindrance, and to feel the prey pulled magnetic to their presence here.

"Tell me how you want him to die," snarls Hannibal softly, teeth clenched, lip curling as he shoves himself against Will, almost painfully aroused. "Will you sever his femoral when he's choking you, hands around your neck and cock in your throat?"

A grunt, as their erections find friction together and meet again and again.

"Or would you rather see me at work," he purrs, "bones breaking loud enough to echo above your whimpering while I fuck you?"

Will's only response is so shudder, arching up then ducking his head to curl against Hannibal again, cock weeping precum against the front of his pants. He gasps, twists, and with an utterly satisfied grin draws his hand back to strike Hannibal across the face.

"Language," he breathes, knowing, feeling that he’s about to get hell, and leans in to kiss Hannibal, hard, before he can respond.

The sting of the slap carries hot through Hannibal’s skin, scarlet where Will's hand broke hard across it.

A dangerous moment passes, before the kiss is returned savagely. Teeth bared, he pulls away only to bite tearing against Will's shoulder, animalistic in his growl, in his furious rutting, in the tidal wave surge of need to throw the boy to the floor and fuck him until he never forgets his place again.

He had sworn, and it is the decided punishment for such a thing, but what pleasure is there in the same rules applying to them both? Hannibal’s hand tightens around Will's neck, cutting off the flow of blood and breath with a precise press of fingertips, delighting darkly as Will gapes silent.

"Wretched boy. You will suffer," comes the whispered admonishment, affecting a bracing cold threat into his voice, but in truth delighted by the act, one of rebellion, of disobedience that gives Hannibal the opportunity to thoroughly debase him.

He shoves the length of his body hard against Will again, a single brutal thrust, before sliding his hand around to Will's cock. A single finger traces gently along the length of it, an infuriatingly soft touch, and he finds a bead of precum slicked there and gathers it on a fingertip, to feed to the wanton boy wrapped around him.

"You will not," Hannibal reminds him, "until I inform you it is time. Go find him and bring him with us. You will lavish your attentions on him in the car, and I will watch, and consider what best to do with him."

Will sobs again, teeth over his lip as he's set down, dressed, let go with a single stinging slap to his ass.

He swallows, licks his lips and rests his forehead against Hannibal's shoulder. 

"I want to watch you kill him," he says softly, nuzzling the warm skin through the shirt before kissing there and obediently returning to the club. 

He finds the man on the couch Hannibal had occupied, relishes in the hungry look he gets before pouting, bending over to whisper in his ear.

"My master is cruel," he bites his lip. “He won't let me cum. Will you convince him for me? Please?"

It seems enough to bring a curse forth from the man, eyes wide, down to where Will’s cock curves beneath the material of his pants. The desire to be just as cruel swims up behind his eyes and Will has to smile.

It will be an excellent evening. 

"If you're a good boy for me."

Will's eyes narrow in pleasure and he pulls the man up by his collar to stumble from the club and hail a cab, to wait for Hannibal to join them.

When Hannibal slides into the cab behind them, shortly after, Will is in the center, of course.

The man's hand moves eagerly to Will's thigh as Hannibal murmurs instructions to the driver, watching peripherally as the man's hand creeps higher towards Will's aching cock, drawing a frail whimper from the boy.

"You want to cum?" asks the man, grinning now, unable to believe his luck.

"Yes, please," sighs Will, glancing towards Hannibal before dragging his eyes back to the other man, leaning into him.

The man's grin bends wider and Hannibal breathes a note of amusement as the man instructs, "Beg me for it."

Hannibal smells of perfume, sweet and feminine, as he leans near over Will. A conspicuous smear of lipstick is drawn along his neck and he makes no effort to hide it as he intones evenly, "Yes, by all means. Beg him."

The color flares in Will's cheeks, eyes flicking to the driver as the car pulls away, the man appearing far too used to such things in his cab near this club to even bother looking back in the rear view mirror. Will swallows, presses his lips together before turning to nearly drape himself over the other man.

“Please,” he moans, lips soft against the man’s cheek down to his jaw and lower still. His hands slip against his chest, tugging gently, childish in their need for this.

He feels more than hears the soft laugh as Hannibal sits back to enjoy the show, privy already to Will’s ability to beg, to his creativity in that regard. But here, there will need to be nothing more than a whining tone and his beautiful eyes. This man, after all, is not Hannibal.

Will sighs, rolls his body gently against the man.

“Please make me cum,” he whimpers, a particular choice of words, appealing to ego rather than mercy.

“I’ll be so good.”

The man sighs roughly, palm skimming the front of his pants, stretched tight over his own cock with such a beautiful young thing rubbing against him, begging so sweetly. His other hand presses hard to Will's length, so stiff it almost hurts to be touched, and the man grins unevenly, overcome by this boy.

Hannibal knows the feeling well.

"You're so hard already, baby," the man intones, sending a ripple of tension through Hannibal with the word. "It seems so unfair to let you suffer like this." He's pleased, when he says it, charmed as so many are by the boy's self-inflicted struggles.

Hannibal's brow lifts in amusement as the boy shifts to straddle the man sharing their cab - sharing Will.

"Ask him in Greek," Hannibal suggests, as though it were a request to pass the salt at dinner.

Will glances at him, a pleased smile pressing his lips together, and does so with the same sweet and desperate intonations as if it were his native tongue. His hips roll slow circles against the man beneath him, whose fingers work at the fly of Will's pants even as he blinks upward in surprise.

"That's impressive," the man admits, and pops the button on Will's pants.

A noise of agreement, as Hannibal observes the way Will's hips turn and rub, twist and grind, fingers sliding beneath his own shirt simply to feel the stimulation of more skin on skin.

"Latin."

Will blinks at Hannibal, cheeks scarlet now with want, and does so effortlessly, pleading in dead languages to be forced to his release.

The man curses, tilts his head up to watch Will before leaning closer still to kiss him as he trembles, nearly overtaken by this.

“Yea,” he pants. “Yea, baby boy, come on - cum for me,”

Will’s entire body tenses, back arched, eyes closed and teeth gritted before he whines, curls forward again.

“Master, may I, please?” he breathes, addressing Hannibal even as the man beneath him plays with his endurance, tugs it so taut it’s close to breaking. Will makes weak little sounds of pain, aiming his pleas at Hannibal now, in every language he’s exhibited already, adding in a few choice phrases in Creole when he can’t control it anymore.

He wonders if they will count towards Hannibal’s list of punishments if they weren’t directed in English.

The throttling tension burns in every inch of Will's body, evident in the shaking of his hands, fisted tight in the man's shirt collar, in the hard curve of his spine, in every part of him that fights against his own release.

Hannibal ignores it, and snares Will by the hair to pull him roughly sideways across the seat. Still straddling the man's lap, but lying across Hannibal's now, he is slapped for each time he swore.

The hand stills, stroking soft where it struck, and Hannibal responds in a murmur of dulcet French, far more elegant than the mixed patois that fell dripping from Will’s mouth.

"I didn't know you speak French.”

A fond expression, genuine and lingering a moment more before he cracks Will again - perhaps for one of the earlier offenses, perhaps simply because it amuses him to do so.

"So do I."

Will bites his lip, watching Hannibal from his lap, from beneath his mop of hair, and the man's wrist twists quicker as he frees Will's cock from his pants, damp from leaking, from the stimulation, resistance, the drugs and the dancing and strange new hands and familiar rough ones.

"We are nearly home," Hannibal informs Will, brows lifting. He reaches down, disrupting the man's pace momentarily to curl his fingers just beneath the head of Will's cock, and squeeze tightly. "You will do so when I instruct you to."

Will sobs and nods, turning to nuzzle against Hannibal’s thigh.

The man regards the exchange, wide-eyed and aroused, wonders how such a beautiful boy ended up with such a cruel man - wondering how he could possibly get as lucky someday and find himself one that is just as happy to take pain. He strokes flat palms over Will’s thighs, longs to have the boy in his arms again as the kid catches his breath in his master’s lap.

He watches Hannibal’s fingers curl in his hair in a gesture that’s almost kind, before letting him go.

“Up.”

Obediently, Will scrambles to sit in the man’s lap again, still hard and leaking, but no longer begging for anything, just trembling with anticipation and promise. Hannibal trails a hand down Will’s neck and then turns away, as though bored, to leave the two of them to their devices.

They are only a few blocks from the house.

“God, look at you,” the man murmurs, stroking Will’s hair, his back, over his thighs… for the moment respecting Hannibal’s wishes to not bring the boy over without permission, though the desire is certainly there to see the boy squirm, disobey, to see him be punished for something he was helpless to.

“You have a very obedient little toy,” he addresses Hannibal, when Will ducks his head to kiss under his jaw, lower to his neck, sweet soft things that leave no marks but speak volumes of submission.

“Where did you find him?”

Hannibal smiles faintly, still watching out of the window, and forces it away to bring the hint of an edge back to his voice.

"He found me, in truth," Hannibal replies. "A chance meeting with entirely unexpected results."

He closes his eyes for a moment, to listen to the car's engine humming, the little sounds of Will's kisses that he can nearly feel against his own skin.

"A rare find, to be certain. Here, please."

The driver pulls over, and Hannibal covers the expense of the ride before they move towards the house. Will still clings to the man, arms wrapped around him and head tucked up against his shoulder to continue kissing his neck, feigning a stumble and caught easily enough by the man's quick arm around him.

Hannibal watches with distinct pleasure as Will's vibrations of energy still enough for him to remove his boots just inside the door. Another sweep of fingers through Will’s hair in reward for this as he passes, and though the man doesn't intend to remove his just yet, he follows their lead in doing so.

He's surprised by the house, the scope and scale of it, studying Hannibal a little more carefully now. It's starting to make sense to him, why such a lovely boy would be so taken with someone so harsh and unyielding. Money is always the great equalizer in these things, and he snorts softly to himself at the thought. These little boys are all the same, although it hardly explains the display of languages in the car earlier.

The curiosity is readily erased by Will ensnaring the man's wrists, pressing his hands against his own belly and sliding them downward, past the barely fastened waistband of his pants, inside them to where he's still dripping hard.

"Our bedroom is upstairs," Will grins, meeting Hannibal's gaze in passing before dragging the man behind him. 

The words are not lost on Hannibal as he watches them go. A mental checklist, familiar enough, of what meals he'd like to cook in the coming week and what ingredients he'll need to complete them. A debate wages, though, as to how he'll end the man. Something that will delight Will, he decides, before following after them.

Upstairs, Will is already undressed, whether by his hand or the man’s it’s hard to say, but Hannibal ignores the mess on the floor for the moment, in favor of watching Will’s body twist and arch pleasantly, flushed and warm, just barely trembling from the overstimulation of the drugs. He still can’t imagine how it must feel for Will, all his extraordinary senses amped up to something almost ethereal, unreal, inhuman.

Perhaps inhumane?

He wonders how often Will has done this to himself. Fallen into a pit of warring senses to see if he would reemerge again.

Hannibal waits at the door, just watches the way the man’s hands slide over Will, how he murmurs gentle things against his boy, how Will smiles at them, shivers, bites his lip. The words carry, and he allows himself to hear them.

“Come to me, baby, come on.”

Will twists again, not at all uncomfortable with being handled so openly, obscenely.

“He’s unkind to you. I’ll be so kind, so gentle with you,”

The words are familiar, the same sick, sordid, dull things repeated over and over into the gullible ears of poor boys who walk the streets. Words that Will knows, has tasted, has regurgitated back in a snarled falsetto when regaling Hannibal with his experiences.

Will’s only reply to the words is a soft growl, fingers curled against the man’s shirt, lip between his teeth. He’s still moving, rocking, swaying to the music no one can hear anymore. A perpetual need to shift and dance and feel his limbs - the drug doing its work.

“Mmm, wanna suck your cock,” he murmurs at length, lips wide in a grin, before he glances over his shoulder, tilts his head, for a moment an expression entirely clear and only for Hannibal to see, before he turns back, continues the act.

“Gonna be so good,” he moans and rubs against the man before sinking gracefully to his knees, hands at the button and zipper already, as one heavy hand lands in his hair, the other goes through the man’s own in utter disbelief of his luck.

The meaningless mutterings resonate in their lack of substance and Hannibal smiles with quiet bemusement as he undoes his shirt. A far cry from Will reciting poetry, but the man seems to gather what he needs from it as a low moan burrows past his lips.

When Will takes him in, it’s immediately deep, immediately hot and perfect. He moans, shivers, sets his knees wider and backs up so he has to bend to reach, giving Hannibal a view of the curve of his back, the curve of his ass, as he gives the other man his mouth.

Eager bursts of vocalization among breathless panting now, the soft wet clicking sounds of Will's mouth wrapped around the man's cock. Hannibal wonders, as he listens to the assorted sounds, how many times Will has performed in such a way in order to so perfect his skill. How many hands and mouths have moved across his body, each desperate to claim him and mark him and make him theirs.

How many have remained alive after doing so.

The man's hand tenses, and the tug against Will's hair elicits a sweet moan from the boy, the barest note of pain pressed deliberately into it, which only makes the man want that sound again.

"Is it good, baby boy?" the man mutters, tilting Will's chin enough that their eyes can meet. "You like sucking daddy's cock?"

Hannibal scarcely contains a laugh at the predictable words, hideously tacky though they are, and removes his pants.

Will nods, wide-eyed, and feigns a soft gagging sound around the man’s length. The man clucks his tongue and works his hips deeper against Will's mouth. "I thought you said you like it rough," he coaxes. "You can do better than that."

It appears that there is certainty behind his words, Hannibal notes, as the man shushes Will's eager whimpers and pushes his cock even deeper into Will's mouth, against his throat, keeping it there.

An agitation, twisting Will's spine as he works his throat open, smothered by the man's cock in it, an unyielding weight that makes it hard to breathe. He's unable to relax away from it, the man's hand still curled in his hair, but simply forces his eyes upwards instead until the man relents, grunting pleasure before picking up a steadier pace.

"I'd be such a good daddy to you," the man intones, head rolling back and eyes closed.

Hannibal draws nearer to them, but does not yet approach the man, instead trailing a gentle caress down Will's spine with the backs of his fingers. Affectionate, genuine, in the touch that moves lower still, to press against the boy's opening. His fingers are cool with lube as Hannibal presses them deeply, buries them to the knuckles and catches Will's hip with the other hand to keep him from squirming away.

How many times like this, Hannibal wonders, made wanton and debased by lesser men than they, before Will brought them as low as humanity allows.

"You can do better than that," Hannibal echoes, amusement in his voice as he settles to his knees behind Will.

Will makes a helpless noise and one hand come up to curl tight around his cock so he can keep orgasm at bay, as he arches and presses back and tilts into the hand against him, keeps his eyes open and up at the man before him. Concentration spreading thin between them before he arches his neck more and takes the man as deep as he can, swallowing over and over until he has to pull off to breathe, the man too pleased and surprised to catch him in time to stop him.

“And take more,” Will agrees, in broken French, before he leans close to run just his parted lips over the man’s cock in front of him, panting for air, flushed and high and horny.

He knows this is all a show, for the man before him, for Hannibal behind him, and he finds that he has no pleasure, at all, in impressing the man he looks up at physically.

He pushes his hips back, turns his head against the man’s still clothed thigh with a moan at the feeling of familiar fingers within him, at the promise of more and deeper and harder.

“Nnng, I want to be fucked,” he groans, biting his lip and laughing, pulling back just enough to see the man above him. “Hard.”

It’s laughable, for anything like that to pass between him and Hannibal, but for this man it does the trick, reels him in, closer and closer to his own oblivion, closer and closer to the two monsters starving for the blood beneath his skin.

Hannibal's fingers twist deeper still, as far as he can reach, a third added roughly - as reward, as punishment, it isn't clear and it doesn't matter, Will whimpers the same either way. A pleased hum at the sound, and Hannibal's eyes meet the man's gaze when he looks to Hannibal, rather than Will, for guidance.

"May I?" asks the man, an almost prim formality to the question, unsure of how to navigate such particular - and promising - waters.

Hannibal’s fingers withdraw from Will with another brutal twist and he runs a hand along the curve of his ass, thumb stroking the boy's soft skin in something like reassurance.

"You may," Hannibal responds after a long moment. "But first, strike him."

Only the heaviness of Will's panting breath fills the silence between them. The man's fingers flex and stretch, but he does not move yet.

"He knows better than to curse," Hannibal explains, thinning patience pulling taut over a sharp edge. "It is unbecoming of one so otherwise lovely. Uncouth. Coarse." A pause, eyes dark and expression utterly serious. "You will strike him, or the evening is at an immediate end."

The man looks down to Will, swallows hard and grins a little, another unexpected perk to the evening. He lifts his hand and slaps, a wan thing compared to the brutal blows that Hannibal rains down upon the boy.

"Harder," Hannibal insists softly. "He has debts to be paid for his incorrigible behavior, and believe me when I say that he can withstand much more than one would be inclined to think from looking at him."

Hannibal stands, a subtle squeeze against Will’s thigh before he does, and motions to the boy’s ass.

“Again. Harder. Here.”

Simple instructions for a simple creature, entirely unaware of the dangerous developments around him.

"If you say so," agrees the man, shucking his pants as he steps around behind Will to where the boy still sits kneeling, bent onto all fours. Another slap, across Will’s ass this time, with his full force behind it.

 

Will whimpers, eyes closed and teeth gritted, showing far more pain and fear than he ever shows Hannibal. Another show. Another performance. He makes a soft sound of pain but stays as he’s been told to, head ducked between his shoulders, arms trembling with holding him up.

The man looks up, flexing his fingers, a grin sitting on his face still, and Hannibal motions permission for another strike. Another after, until the man stops asking. Hannibal circles around to Will’s front, crouches where he can see Will’s face, lips parted on whimpers and begging, eyes closed against the pain.

When he snares his jaw, Will turns his eyes to him, wide and bright and wet, and grins.

“Harder,” he mouths, feigning another agonized wail when he’s struck again, raising his voice on false words: “Stop, please stop, I’ll be better.”

The sound of skin-on-skin resounds through the room, and Will whimpers with increasing intensity each time another strike lands across his ass. He rolls his eyes a little, wry, before ducking his head and begging soft, voice cracking, "Please, sir. I won't do it again."

Hannibal lifts a hand to stay the man's blows and raises Will's chin with the side of his finger, leaning in to murmur quietly in French against his ear.

"In truth, I lost count of your swearing throughout the evening," he admits with amusement shared only between them. A looseness in his voice, in his carriage - as Will reads it, though to the man Hannibal still seems a looming force - as he feels still the drug winding through his system, and the relief promised by finally tearing out the seams that have held the monster scarcely at bay through the night.

His expression is smooth as polished stone as Hannibal stands again, to take in the sight of Will bent and scarlet-assed from the spanking.

"There is lubricant in the dresser beside the bed," Hannibal informs the man.

That instruction is followed quickly, and Will takes a moment to rub a hand over his face, rest forward on his elbows as he catches his breath. His nerves sing, his blood rushes behind his ears and there is still music, the thump-thump-thump of a bass beat around him, though it could be his heart.

He goes when Hannibal turns him over, lying on his back like a cat in the sun and obediently spreading his legs wide when the man returns and settles between them. He’s coy, a teasing little thing with bitten lips and hooded eyes, knees drawn up and head ducked against his shoulder, eyes up looking at the man through his hair.

Will can see Hannibal in his peripheral, taking his fill of the boy as well, so familiar now, so pleasant. And all his, entirely so. Even without the bruises sucked dark and harsh against his skin, against the insides of his thighs, against his hips… Hannibal owns Will as entirely as Will gives himself.

“Such a beautiful boy and such a filthy mouth,” the man murmurs, sliding his hands over Will’s stomach and down, stroking his cock just once to feel Will gasp, arch up, tense with anticipation.

Will brings a hand down to curl around his length, squeezing hard to hold his orgasm back, but the picture is a gorgeous one; flushed cheeks flushed chest, red knees, red thighs and deeply pink cock curved up from beneath his fingers.

Will moans, and the man doesn’t hold back, lining himself up and pushing in hard, watching Will’s back arch, catching his hands beneath.

“Fuck, _fuck_ ,” the man groans, starting a harsh, brutal rhythm that has Will pushing back against the carpet, stretching one arm above his head, fingers splayed in pleasure, seeking permission and finding none. He watches Hannibal, eyes barely open, lips just curving into a smile, as he moans again, for the man between his legs, for the man above him.

Hannibal knows that Will won't finish without explicit permission, unless he's craving a more severe punishment in retribution. A victory either way, Hannibal considers, watching his boy squirm against the carpet.

He imagines how sweetly Will is going to laugh when he finally orgasms, with this man dead beside him, and hums a pleased note.

Hannibal circles them slowly, watching the display with particular attention and content to ignore the half-hard state of his own cock at the moment. He curls a hand around the man's chin this time - an expression of dominance that the man resists with a quick jerk of his head. He's not able to see what Will can see from the floor - Hannibal's other hand looming above the man's head, in the precise position to snap his neck.

The display draws a long, heady moan from Will, an honest and gleeful encouragement. Hannibal smiles, pleased to delight him in such a way, and he lets his hands fall away for now as the man fucks into Will.

"He can take much more than that," Hannibal informs the man as his circling finally ceases. A grin curls the man's lips and he groans, fucking Will with abandon, careless as to the boy's whimpers, his gratifying little murmurs of how it hurts. Hannibal presses his hands to Will's shoulders as he kneels above him, holding him in place, leaning low to kiss him.

A soft, almost tender thing, mouths meeting gently before Hannibal leans back again, cock hard against Will's cheek.

The man doesn't notice as Hannibal tugs his shed pants slightly closer, within arm's reach.

Will makes a series of soft needy sounds, higher in pitch, as he gets closer and closer, as it becomes harder to hold back, an honest struggle instead of a feigned one.

"Please?"

Hannibal strokes his face, shakes his head, and delights in how Will still parts his lips for him, brows drawn and sobbing, until he takes Hannibal’s cock in his mouth and obediently sucks.

It isn’t deep, just enough to feel Will’s lips circle the head, the angle is too awkward for much more, but the view, the idea that this boy, this remarkable, clever, beautiful boy can take it, does take it with such perfect obedience, sends the man fucking him into a frenzy of quick thrusts and harsh breaths, sordid praise for the boy he's debasing.

Will struggles for a moment, tongues the slit until he can taste the first drops of bitter release, and pulls away.

"I can't!"

"You can,” comes the soft reply. Be it permission or an expectation of more, Will no longer cares. He doesn’t even need to touch himself before he's pulsing tendrils of white against his own stomach, the pleasure almost pain now with how long he's waited.

His lips spread in a smile, he draws his bottom lip between his teeth and laughs softly, just once, a sound of such deep, genuine pleasure that Hannibal's breath catches, that his mind connects the fact, quickly, sharply, that the man fucking Will is not himself, but that when Will’s eyes open again they go straight to him.

"Very good, Will."

The praise is genuine, soft-spoken as Hannibal rests his hand against the boy's cheek. He's unsure whose skin is warmer as he traces his thumb fondly, but the man's voice breaks the moment of connection as he gasps.

"I'm gonna cum," he declares, thrusting erratic now, fingers clenched hard to push Will's legs up higher, further apart, to drive deeper harder faster into him, eyes open only to slits to watch the boy's release spread across his pale skin.

Hannibal's eyes turn upwards from Will, an inhuman curve gathering in his spine, a snarl snaring his lip to bare his teeth. Wolfish, protective of that which belongs to him, entirely, and him alone, unwilling to let his boy be further defiled by this other.

"You will not," Hannibal informs the man, and before the man has time to do more than blink in surprise, he's been grabbed by the hair, head tilted back, and his throat opens wide and silent as Hannibal passes Will's knife across it.

He does appreciate the boy's affection for gore, though he does not usually share it with such fervor. It will require replacing the expensive rug, Hannibal considers, but as he watches the blood cascade over Will in a torrent across his belly, chest, a wave of scarlet covering pale skin, it's well worth the cost of that carpet or any other.

Will squirms, lips parted and eyes closed in utter ecstasy in the moment, arching up as blood slips down his skin, the spray up under his chin as well, warm and tacky and thick.

He turns his head to gasp, eyes wide when he opens them, smile clear, and he laughs again, a warmer, lower sound, and draws a hand over his face to smear the drops that had landed that far.

Will adjusts, makes a gentle noise of discomfort and pulls from the man, still hard within him, as the body convulses and rests still, held off of Will by Hannibal's grip. He’s breathless, excited, adrenaline running and sparking and shuddering through his blood. He needs air, he needs water, knows he needs to rest so the X can flow from his system, but all he manages is to sit up, wincing at the stretch, and laugh. 

With utter innocence and abandon.

Truly, genuinely pleased.

"I -" he giggles, presses his knuckles to his cheek, down to his lips, before managing to look at Hannibal properly.

"I didn't know you spoke French."

Hannibal releases the man's hair with a quick push, letting the body fall to the floor with a thump. His arms surround Will immediately, tugging the boy into his lap and sitting back cross-legged to keep him close, blood running warm between them.

"Among others," Hannibal responds, a faint grin at Will's little laughs and visible delight. He nuzzles the boy's neck, kissing, tasting the salt of sweat and the metallic tang of blood from Will's skin.

A joyous exhaustion between them, a raw and revealed warmth found in this shared experience, in blood on their hands and hungers profoundly sated. He keeps Will tight against him, kissing soft, until the tremors of excitement ease from the boy’s skin into pliancy, a spent yielding of his body to curve gently into Hannibal's own.

"You are extraordinary," Hannibal sighs into Will's sweat-drenched curls of hair. "Incorrigible. Delightful. Improbable, entirely."

His hips roll against the boy, uninsistent but simply enjoying the sensation of it, the way the drug allows him to speak and move so easily now that his seams have been shredded and the monster beneath let free and satisfied. An absolute shift from the staid and stern presence he had maintained all night, allowing himself now to be utterly enthralled by the languid boy draped across his lap.

"Will you assist me later, in preparing him?" Hannibal asks.

Will hums, so contented here, in the arms of the killer responsible for the body just behind him. He feels stretched and raw and used, and the high he had been scared would not come when he himself did not kill, thrums through him with every pulse of his heart. Just as present, just as intense.

“Yes,” he breathes, nuzzling against the man’s neck, enjoying the gentle touches, the soft and careful fingers that had just moments before pushed bruises against him, forced his head back… and yet he knows that Hannibal is not being anything other than himself, with his praise and his hands and the steady beat of his heart.

He feels his own match, beat between beat then beat for beat, a new bassline to dance to, while the drug still cools his blood and heats his brain.

He pulls back and just looks at him, brings up a bloodied hand to trace fingertips over Hannibal’s lips, painting them before leaning in to chase the color away. It starts soft, as the kiss had been between them with Will on his back, but when one heart speeds up so does the other, and arms slippery with blood find their way around Hannibal’s neck, pull himself closer so he’s kneeling over his lap, head ducked just enough to keep their mouths together.

His eyes are closed, hair wet over his face, blood drying on his cheeks where he’d smeared it. He grins, draws his nose against Hannibal’s and laughs gently.

“And you swear,” he reminds Hannibal, returning to their conversation about French, or perhaps a new thing entirely, novel discoveries and allowances that send Will’s heart beating thick against his ears again.

"When so moved," he responds, nuzzling Will's cheek, kissing him soundly again. "Inspired by the nearness to particular debaucheries."

A roll of hips, seeking contact, pressure, friction between them. Hannibal draws a sharp breath as his cock slides against Will's ass, pressing his forehead to his temple, mouth warm against his skin.

"You will assist me," he breathes, confirmation. "Peel back skin and bone to reveal all that made him move against you, all that stirred him towards you as you stir me. A revelation, sustenance for us both."

Another rough shift of hips, entirely in the thrall of the boy whose very heart so mirrors his own. Hannibal presses himself against the boy’s entrance, and sighs soft.

"May I?"

An unfamiliar submission in the question, a tribute to how much the boy astride him owns him, as much if not more than he owns this boy.

Will grins, the gesture just as slow, lazy, as his entire body has decided to become. As though moving through water, the bass beat slowing but never stilling. He turns his hand, sliding messy fingers through Hannibal’s hair, turning his head so their lips brush but doesn’t kiss him.

“Slow,” he replies, a wicked grin spreading his lips as he pushing up just a little higher, closer, in invitation.

The stretch is familiar, delicious after the abuse of before, and Will tenses, arches hard and digs his nails against Hannibal’s shoulder, his scalp. It’s deliberate, a taking, reclaiming, and Will pants against it, still sensitive, still overwhelmed by the pleasure, the pain, the blood against him.

He makes a sound far too helpless to be one he allows, but then he makes another, presses that against Hannibal’s lips and settles against him, feeling the full length of him, hard, hot, ready for him. Will bites Hannibal’s lip when he pulls away.

“Slow,” he commands, one hand against his chest to hold him still, in warning, before curling his fingers into a gentle fist and allowing Hannibal to move him as he pleases, eyes on his, not blinking, feeling his cheeks color with the scrutiny and still keeping it up.

“How did it feel?” he asks softly, breathless, when Hannibal starts to push back in. “When you watched?”

"I felt envy," Hannibal sighs low, maintaining the pace that Will has set for him, measured strokes deep and slow. "In my eagerness to join with you again."

He pulls slowly back out, hands on Will's hips, still shifting in gyrations to the music of their breaths, their bodies.

"Pleased, that you are yet mine to enjoy whenever it suits me."

An achingly slow push in again, burying himself entirely before Will's hand unclenches to press against Hannibal's chest. He does not move once stopped, entirely in the boy's sway and watching breathless as Will circles his hips to feel the length of Hannibal's cock buried inside him. It draws a low groan from Hannibal, already sharp senses tipping into an almost overwhelming hypersensitivity.

The boy is effortlessly elegant in his movements, an organic rhythm to all he does, beautifully thoughtless now in his behaviors.

"The sight of you," breathes Hannibal, moving when Will allows him again. The sentence hangs unfinished, too many words to fill that endless space and all so entirely ineffective to describe the way the boy moves him.

He kisses Will instead, lips parting against each other to express what words fail at this moment. A poetry indescribable as they match movements and mouths and heartbeats and hands running firm and slow over bare skin still sticky with blood until Hannibal speaks soft against Will's shoulder.

"I felt as though I may never find you uninteresting."

A soft sound, a murmuring moan, and Will arches, body tensed against Hannibal’s in pleasure. There is more than affection here, it's a strange depth of devotion neither had expected. Envy, lust, yes, but this draws out the marrow of their bones, pulls at their sinews.

This turns them both to instruments, complementary and complicated.

Will parts his lips on a breathless little groan and closes his eyes.

For a few moments he says nothing, rides out the slow, delicious friction before he breathes one word that hitches in the middle, cracking the tension between them.

"Harder." 

A snarl presses against Will's shoulder in reply, head ducked as Hannibal fucks him a little faster, following the quickening of his pulse, his own now desperate need to find release, intoxication and the shared spilling of blood proving alarmingly irresistible to the predator parting Will's thighs.

He curls a hand in the boy's hair, tilting his head to bare the spray of blood browning beneath his chin. Spilling down his skin as though dripped from a wound opening Will's throat rather than someone else's, Hannibal only just resists speeding his pace faster still.

His boy, to worship and to punish and to fuck and to kill. A beautiful and wanton thing given over to him as entirely as he feels given over to Will in this moment.

"Will," Hannibal sighs, low, a request, a warning, an adoration.

Will grins, allows Hannibal to push harder, faster into him, feels hot lips against his throat, just as dangerous a kiss as the blood had been, just as alive, just as closely mirroring death.

His arms are curls hard around Hannibal, now, holding on and pushing up, again and again, over and over, until he feels his cock harden between them, sensitive and curved up against his stomach.

"You still want to tear me apart," he gasps, head turning gently, pressed to Hannibal’s temple, murmuring words against the dry blood he'd smeared there.

"You still want to taste my blood and flay me alive,"

The words send shivers through Hannibal, another snarl, another adjustment in pace until Will tugs the other man closer, feels balance and gravity and time shift to find his back against the bloodied floor. He wraps his legs around Hannibal’s hips, utterly elegant in the wanton motion, beautiful and depraved.

"Harder," he urges again. “Tell me."

Hannibal's hips drive bruising rough against Will's thighs, reaching back with a hand to hitch his legs higher, the other planted in the blood-soaked carpet cold and wet beneath Will's back.

"I will know every inch of you," Hannibal sighs hard against the boy's mouth. Not kissing, but possessing.

"Every last breath you take beneath my hands will be my name, so that it is the last word to leave your mouth alive."

Will arches beneath Hannibal, seeking his mouth to taste the cruel words but denied by Hannibal, who keeps the same distance between them.

"There is not a part of you that I will not seek to use and devour," Hannibal promises him, hips leaving bruises on Will's pale legs now, unable to hold back, unwilling to try, seeking only Will's heat and movement and breath. He leans lower now, cheek to bloody cheek with Will, and whispers soft against his ear.

"I will save your heart for last, dear Will. Every bite to be savored, for there will never be another like it."

Will sobs at the words, the response entirely genuine, entirely human. Body shivering and twisting, already close again from just the suggestions made him.

He bucks up, determined to meet every thrust, to return it with equal fervor, and for a few moments they are lost in each other, in the heat and slick and grip of the other. Will's breathing hitches, over and over, not allowing him a full breath. He’s dizzy, hot, the drug in his blood still urging to dance, yearning to move, but his limbs exhausted, his body used.

"Eat it raw,” he requests, his French sharp, unrefined between them, and it's enough to feel Hannibal groan, push, release within him.

"As you wish," Hannibal murmurs, panting unsteady with the rush of release. "As you are."

Without yet drawing from inside Will, he slides an arm beneath him to bring him upright again. Grasping his cock, Hannibal pumps his fist slowly over the length of it, long squeezing strokes that mirror the ceaseless movement of the boy's body.

"It will be the rarest experience I can imagine, to be relished once and never again."

He closes his mouth against Will's, catching the moan that shakes itself free of the exhausted boy, pulsing in time with his release, spurting slick against Hannibal's fingers, trailing white against the dried blood.

"Very good," Hannibal praises him again, nuzzling against his cheek, kissing the corner of his mouth. He stands slow, unsteady himself, and scoops his boy from the floor and into his arms. Will slips his arms around Hannibal's neck, trying to catch his breath, feverishly hot.

"A bath, I think," Hannibal murmurs, more to himself than to Will, as he takes the boy through to the bathroom, sets him there, unsteady and filthy, for the moment, and runs the water.

Will is left alone, while the body is gathered and moved to the basement, to be taken apart and harvested properly later. Frozen, for now, until Will is conscious enough to help.

He regards the water as it runs steadily into the bath, clear, smelling of nothing but water itself. He lets his fingers splay beneath the stream, watches the light flicker off it, draw fireflies in his vision as the drug starts to finally fade.

By the time Hannibal returns, Will is up to his neck in the water, surprisingly clean considering the mess. A brief glance to the shower suggests he'd rinsed himself clean before enjoying the water.

He looks barely conscious, contented, comfortable. He blinks his eyes open, blue and clear again, and smiles.

Hannibal regards Will's smile with a pale mirror of his own, and offers Will a glass of ice water.

"Drink."

It is, perhaps, the first time that Will has seen Hannibal appear tired. He keeps his composure, as ever, but there's a liquidity to his movements, a languor that aches bone-deep throughout him.

Will accepts the water and swallows down a few needed gulps before Hannibal clucks his tongue. The boy slows, and Hannibal regards it with approval before he pads to the shower.

A perfunctory wash, far less involved than the long, precise showers Hannibal typically takes, He glances at Will, once in a while, observing him there in the tub, either playing with the water between his fingers, or watching Hannibal in return.

When he emerges he avoids taking up a towel, and instead finds his way to Will again, as he seems to more and more. A pause, and then an adjustment, inching Will forward enough in the tub that Hannibal can drop into the cool water behind him.

He cups water in his hands as Will settles back between his legs, pours it over the boy's hair and hums as it cascades down the curves of Will's neck and shoulders.

"Was the evening pleasing to you?" He allows another soft smile. "Far more successful than my own attempt."

Will bites his lip in pleasure, rests all his weight back against Hannibal. The water helps, to keep his body suspended, to fill his stomach now, cooling the fire within it.

“Successful,” he considers, remembers the evening when Hannibal had dragged him through the house, brought Will down to the lowest of human low he could be. Because he had disobeyed, because he had worked so hard with his pride to destroy what they had worked so long to build, fought so fiercely to protect.

He remembers the night in the freezing basement, horrific images floating through his mind of the boys in the freezers, of how close he had come to joining them.

He remembers well.

“Yours was very successful,” he replies at length. “You weren’t out to procure, you were there to educate. And I learned.”

He slides one hand back to take one of Hannibal’s, threads their fingers together gently just above the surface of the water, allows Hannibal’s to fold over his palm before closing his own.

“Tonight was very pleasing,” he adds gently, turning his head against Hannibal again, under his chin, a comfortable cat-like nuzzle. Tired and lazy. One of his cheeks is red, a fringe of purple against his cheekbone and jaw where Hannibal had struck him. It will darken over the next few days, then fade to yellow, then fade entirely.

And then he would earn more.

Hannibal brings a hand softly against the boy’s cheek, traces his thumb across the dawning bruise and settles his chin atop Will’s head. Eyes closed, his own body’s fever cooled by the water around them.

“It was a rare joy to see you work,” he says, almost carefully. “But you are not without room for improvement,” adds Hannibal, with something like relief, amusement, although in truth he can think of nothing tonight to teach the boy, no missteps beyond slapping Hannibal, which he’ll pay for once they’re both sober enough to properly enjoy it. Beyond it, seeing the boy move and draw and lure had been fascinating, a predator’s instincts enough like his own in practicality, but so unlike his in practice.

He presses the hand twined with Will’s against the boy’s stomach, up his chest, to rest his fingers against his throat without pressure, but a familiar comforting contact for them both.

“How would you have ended me, Will?” Hannibal asks, turning his own cheek against the Will’s, kissing his water-cool skin, tasting the remnants of blood and soap and pale boy sweet and sleepy. “If you had found me at your mercy on our first night together, or perhaps if you are able to catch me unaware in the future, before I you.”

Gentle tones, impossibly fond, drawn as ever to the intimacy of their mutually assured destruction, comforted by the cold war in which they’ve found themselves ensconced that keeps it at bay.

Will considers, presses his lips together, forces his mind to go back far enough beyond a mutual understanding, beyond the nights both sleepless and sleepy together, lying awake and restless apart. It should be a relationship, he thinks, amusement coiling in his chest. This is what people do when they choose a partner to share space with. Get close. Relax. Live.

But not them. 

There is no rest with them, and neither want any.

“I would have knocked your head against the mirror in the bathroom,” he muses softly, words barely slurred but slurred enough. “After you’d tell me to go. Hard enough to break skin, if not glass, but I may have struck you again for the ash.”

He smiles, draws fingers through the water before lifting them to watch them drip, the way the water gathers, catches the light, makes it seem as though Will is melting into the water itself, disappearing.

“I would have used a knife,” he adds, “because you would hate the mess. It would eat at you. I would have staged a robbery. I would’ve left you near dead on the floor to watch me go.”

He swallows, brows furrowing, displeased by his own barbarity in regard to the man behind him who now means so much more than a single face in a sea of thousands of them.

“In the future, you won’t see me when I kill you,” he whispers.

"No mercy, then," Hannibal responds, running his hand along Will's collarbones, from one side to the other. "No final moment to look upon what you have become and see it fully realized."

He kisses Will's shoulder, up to the curve of his neck.

"Cruel boy."

For the first time, it seems a genuine possibility that the boy could end him. An innate savagery and skill, developing daily into something even more formidable. It would not be an unwelcome death, to feel the boy's hands press against his skin one more time, and to carry that touch with him as the last he'll ever feel.

A shiver, and Hannibal snares Will around the waist, surrounding him, keeping him near. He wonders if Will realizes how deeply he has fallen into thrall beneath him, how readily Hannibal would procure for him, hunt for him, clean up and fix for him, protect him in moments when his strength is not enough.

Better, perhaps, that he does not know.

"Someday," Hannibal murmurs, content to leave it at that, happier still that someday is not today.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another brief hiatus, loves, for a few days to regather and attack again in full force.
> 
> IN THE MEANTIME, for a later chapter, send us 3 kinks you would like to see played out. Depraved is excellent. They will potentially be used on our clever little Will, so keep that in mind.
> 
> We shall select and credit any and all who contribute!!


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Utter calm as Hannibal regards him, lightless eyes wide and intrigued by what fight is left in the boy. An animal movement, nearly reptilian, as his head tilts and he steps forward, inhuman in his hunt. Primordial. Primal. And vastly more terrifying than when he snarled and spit and struck.
> 
> “What now, Will?” Hannibal asks softly. “How will the evening end?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As ever, a forewarning: if you are sensitive to excessive sadism, abusive violence, and dubcon that is arguably, actually, noncon...
> 
> ...you probably should have stopped reading before getting all the way to chapter eleven.

The more time passes, the more things stay the same.

Familiarity grows, day in and day out, with the emergent rituals they’ve formed together. They wake entangled, part to class or to work, return on opposing nights one before the other, depending on whose itch to go out, to stretch, breathe, hunt, slaughter has grown more insufferable in the maintenance of their masks to the outside world.

Masks they do not restore when arriving home again to find the other and play as predators, snapping and snarling, an endless tangle of words and bodies seeking dominance, possession, connection with the other.

A routine that for all its gleeful honesty in the horrors they harbor, remains still a routine.

A pattern, predictable, involving a boy that despite everything would strangle Hannibal in his sleep if he could, when it all comes to that invariable end.

Lulled into complacency.

Unsafe in certainty.

Hannibal is reading near the fire when Will arrives home. He’s in his robe already, rather than his suit, dinner cleared away if it was served at all. Tension in his fingers hidden with the turn of a page, eased away before the paper has settled against the one before it. He listens to the thud of boots beside the door, the unshuffling of coat and scarf, a pause to shake the snow from his hair before padding barefoot towards the living room.

“Hello, Will,” murmurs Hannibal, comfortably quiet as music plays low from the speakers. “How was your evening?”

Will makes a vague gesture, suggesting it wasn't even interesting enough to mention, and stops in the middle of the room, eyes narrowed both in exhaustion and an odd suspicion.

"Haven't seen that robe since you made me cut down to half a pack a day," Will murmurs. In truth he doesn't often smoke for pleasure. He smokes for company, for a chance to clear his head on early mornings, between classes. On one memorable occasion, smoking helped a hunt.

Something catches him off, though - too normal. No hunger, he realizes, radiating from the man in front of him.

Even on nights Will wasn’t immediately pinned to the door or the wall or over the table, there was a hunger there, underlying, seeping from the stitches holding the intricate human suit onto the monster beneath.

And now, nothing.

Calm, laxity. Genuine relaxation.

Will swallows and continues past Hannibal to the kitchen, pulling a bottle of wine from the stand, ones Hannibal uses for cooking, and pouring himself a glass.

"Yours?" Will asks from the other room, not curious so much as wanting to see how much more he could read off of him, from his voice, his tone and timbre.

Hannibal settles back into the robe, into his chair, freshly scrubbed and showered and in truth only still awake for Will's return. Old habits would have him soundly asleep, contented, by now.

New habits demand a different response.

"Much the same as yours," Hannibal responds, finally glancing up as the boy re-enters the room, wine in hand.

Will sips, a far better wine than most would ever consider using for cooking, and studies Hannibal over the rim of his glass.

Implication, but no accusation. No harsh edges sharpening the easy curl of accented words. Entirely settled, the way he sounds late at night when they're exhausted and near to sleep.

But Hannibal doesn't bury the tone, most curiously, though he easily could. The older man turns a faintly curious look to Will at his narrow-eyed lingering, until the boy approaches.

Edging nearer, though with hesitation - the scent of something on the wind that has caught a predator's interest. As soon as Will is near enough, Hannibal sets his book aside and tugs the boy down into his lap.

A moment more of peace, nuzzling his hair to breathe in the whereabouts of where Will has been, what he's been doing, and the familiar sweetness cloying like rot beneath it all.

Hannibal hums, content with what he finds. "You went to your lectures today."

Will says nothing, returns the hum with one of his own, asserting agreement, and takes another sip of wine. Motions, motions but no end to them. He feels as though he's part of a very well rehearsed play - some sick domestic scene from a sitcom.

His mind spins with answers like a damned wheel of fortune and doesn’t settle enough for anything definitive. Will leans to set the glass aside and Hannibal presses warm lips to his temple. Familiar, practiced, a gesture of pure comfort and trust that only comes after hours, first, of torment.

"You fucked someone."

It's deadpan, low, and Will twists from another kiss to hold Hannibal at bay with splayed fingers on his chest.

It's more than that, with the sleepy look in Hannibal’s expression, the bare curve of a contented smile. Will feels the wine burn like vinegar in his stomach.

"You liked fucking someone else."

A blink up at the boy, a feigned surprise convincing enough to seem real to anyone who can’t read Hannibal so readily.

“Should I not have?”

Fucked someone or enjoyed it, the question doesn’t seem to merit qualification, and Hannibal doesn’t yet loosen his arms from around the boy’s waist, keeping him near despite the press of fingers against his chest, the tightening of Will’s hand around the glass of wine.

Hannibal nuzzles gently beneath Will’s chin, forcing kisses against his neck, and murmurs softly, “He was lovely, young as you perhaps, though far more filled with hope. I doubt he’s ever been picked up and brought to a place such as this. He reeked of cheap motels, the bleach of starched sheets.”

He presses his palm up the boy’s back, feeling his spine curl with tension, and smiles faintly.

“His hands grasped these as though he’d never touched anything so soft before.”

Will feels sick, a tug against his stomach that sets it roiling. His hand curls nails to Hannibal's chest now, harsh here where he usually relishes in the sensation of never really causing Hannibal pain.

"And you spread him across them as you had never seen anything so beautiful," Will snarls in return, feeling the scene play out without having to ask about it.

Some kid, smiling wide and trembling with anticipation, brought here and told he could touch, could relax. Kissed soft as deft fingers undid the buttons to his shirt - no, too poor for a button up, a tee shirt, threadbare and stretched, pulled over his head.

Arms holding him tight as Hannibal holds Will now, whispered confessions and apologies, promises, the slow spread of the boy’s legs, flushed with arousal and hope, the gentleness...

Will jerks as though stung, and twists from Hannibal’s grip to stand.

"What did he have," he asks, voice harsh, energy trembling beneath that transcends logic, "that made you keep him? Did he speak fucken Enochian to you in bed, angel that he was, what?"

The jealousy is unexpected, inescapable, and Will wants to tear himself to pieces right after he feels Hannibal’s blood drawn against his skin.

A sigh as Hannibal moves to stand, catching the boy in a quick slap, voice lowering.

“Language.”

He snares Will’s chin as soon as he jerks it back, forcefully pulling him near again. Studying the fury in his eyes, the hot burn searing through his cheeks, unabated rage and envy stirring his pulse sharp and fast.

Breaking apart patterns, to see what new ones re-emerge.

“He did not have to,” Hannibal responds softly. He pushes Will’s hair back from his face with his other hand, fingernails still digging sharp into his cheeks. Cruelty and tenderness, affection and brutality.

“He had in him a humanity that I have missed. A fearlessness, not knowing that there was aught to fear at all. Simple emotions stirred simply beneath my hands.” Will twists to try to pull away and Hannibal grabs him roughly by the back of the neck to tug him close.

“Is that not what you seek with your others, Will?”

Will’s breathing comes quicker, the upset fuelled by the gentleness in tone, the patronizing tenderness. He knows he should not be angry, has no right to be angry. He holds as little of Hannibal as the other does of him but his heart speeds, now, for once, blood running like acid through his veins.

"I seek," Will hisses, "to feel blood on my tongue, to feel life give way beneath my hands because I am _better_ than what fucken rents me."

He snarls, like a cat caught by the scruff, and aims a strike to Hannibal's chest to push him away, to no avail.

"I had to play puppy tonight for some cunt who thought it was fun," Will sneers. "I left the fucken scene so spotless you'd be on your fucken knees worshiping the work, and you -"

The back of Hannibal’s hand comes down across his mouth with enough force to more than make up for the sputtering curses, all at once, hard enough to knock the boy to the floor if Hannibal didn’t have him by the hair to keep him upright. He envisions the boy on all fours, collared, whining soft and sweet and utterly debased, allowing himself to be demeaned as weak and gentle so that he could rip and tear at the first opportunity.

It delights him, in truth, to imagine it.

“And I enjoyed my evening,” Hannibal says simply, tone lowering, edging nearer to something like warning. “I heard my name called out beautifully, again and again, an aria unfamiliar to me and fascinating in its newness.”

He doesn’t let Will go yet, despite the increasing violence of his thrashing, of blows easily taken or avoided. Hannibal snarls silently, lips curling as he slices his palm against the boy’s back, forces it lower into the tight jeans that cling to him, and circles a finger just soft against Will’s opening, easily overpowering his resistance to the invasive touch.

“Did you not enjoy your evening, then? Did you not whimper, hard and aching, for him when he bent you over and told you what a good boy you are? What a good dog?”

Now Hannibal releases him, blood racing hot beneath his skin in feeling the boy’s anger surge uncontrolled. A new experience, thrilling and wild, to see him act with such an absolute abandon, overwhelmed by envy and fury.

Releasing him as prey, to be hunted. As a fellow predator, to subdue for dominance.

A fearless humanity, much missed in the comfort of the daily inhumanity of their own existence.

Will’s eyes are wide, dark with the promise of threats beneath his skin. He’s shaking now, adrenaline thrumming through his blood, and swallows, lips parted, lined red against the inside where the slap and pressed his skin too close to his teeth.

"If the boy only knew what poison you were feeding him." Will shakes his head, a low laugh that sounds distinctly unpleasant as he runs a hand through his hair, energy coiled for now, held captive, a deliberate boil.

"All this?" He gestures to the expensive trappings, the fine fabrics and antiques. "It's a glass shell, Hannibal, so pristine you had to mar it, paint it shut until it was no longer clear. You hide behind veneers, you hide behind fucken riches and power and you are powerless, when you are aching in your fucken boredom."

He steps close enough again to meet Hannibal’s eyes properly.

"Those sweet arias will grow dull. His youth will wilt and fatten under your undivided attention, and you will beg for something better when you realize you've outgrown your little sandbox."

Another slap, sharp but not as harsh, and Will spits at him, pleased with the pink of the drops against Hannibal’s face.

"He will bore you,” Will whispers, "with his humanity. With his gentleness. He will not revere your monster when he sees it, he will hate you. And you will be left with an empty shell and echoes of pretty words."

Hannibal closes his eyes as he draws his hand through the spit and blood flecked across his cheek. A thoughtful sound, pressing a finger to his lips to taste it, the rich metallic tang earning another soft noise.

A terrifying restraint, expression darkening as the sky before a storm, a promise of thunder in the distance.

“Is this reverence, Will?” He does not reach for him, does not mark him again across a cheek already shadowed with a fresh bruise, across his lip already split again. “Are my hungers, which you presume to know so well, so wholly sated by you that I should seek no other?”

Hannibal steps closer, looming shoulders spread broad, larger than before as he draws close to the boy. A slight smile, pleased, amused even, as he lifts a hand to press to Will’s cheek, thumb stroking softly against his skin, warm from the strike, from the fierce spite aimed at Hannibal.

“Did Beatrice not live amongst the poison, and in doing so become inured to its effects, yet toxic to others?” Tender now, in the nuzzle he turns against Will’s temple, words soft against his ear. “Do you imagine yourself the only one I can teach?”

Will’s eyes close and for a moment he allows the touches before forcefully twisting away again.

"You can teach any number," he hisses. “And you can fuck," a deliberate pronunciation, "as many boys as cross your path, Hannibal, but you don't desire to."

"You are too proud to let yourself be spread in turn, too high and fucken mighty on your own goddamn pedestal. Once in a while you get saddled with a student and you drive them insane for your amusement."

Will scoffs, "Except Alana Bloom. You very much enjoyed cultivating her like her name suggests. You don't kill women. Your hungers don't reach there. You killed when you had her, to stifle the need."

Suddenly Will blinks, laughs, shakes his head.

"That's it, isn't it?" he grins, suddenly savagely happy. "You can't kill me. You ache to and you try but you can't do it."

Will bites his lip in pure delight and steps close again, right into the snake's embrace. He swallows, lifts his eyes.

"Zugzwang."

Another infuriating smile, faint and untroubled by the accusations Will levels at him, entirely unperturbed by them.

Disinterested.

“I have done nothing that you do not, Will. That I have not allowed and indulged you in, taught and shaped in you, ordo ab chao. Fostered and encouraged, even when you come home stinking of sweat and semen.”

He turns from him, forces a distance, forces himself to not yet indulge in feeling the boy tear and fight beneath him as he raises welts and bruises on his pale skin, feels his fingernails and teeth rip sharp and savage against his own flesh.

Hannibal sighs, patient.

Soon.

“What you fear is the knowledge that what I have to offer you is irreplaceable, experience and skill unlike any of the men that you let rut against you nightly, and that were I to find another student, you would be interchangeable with them.”

He takes up his book again, the wine that Will set aside to strike and snarl.

“I had presumed you to be above such jealousy, Will.”

Hannibal smiles, unseen with his back towards the boy, at the simmering rage he hears behind him and clucks his tongue, once, dismissive.

Will’s cheeks darken, his jaw locks in a twitch and Will lets out a slow breath through his nose. He considers stepping closer, considers why he’s jealous when Hannibal, infuriatingly, has said nothing untrue.

"And I once thought you wise," Will whispers, smiling wide and almost bowing in mockery of the gesture.

He turns on his heel, unwilling to see Hannibal there, to feel the indifference he had so wished on Hannibal aimed instead at himself.

He knows he's smarter, faster, crueller than any boy Hannibal has brought home but... what if another had lived? What if another had escaped him? Will swallows down the terror of being replaced and leaves the room.

From the kitchen, comes a shattering of glass as Will tosses the bottle to the floor. A silence, in fear, perhaps, in something else, and then a laugh, a curse, and another smash, this one more hollow, not glass this time but porcelain, once delicate and expensive.

Worthy.

Like Will.

A static spark of tension at the first break, that flares like lightning at the second.

From the proximity of the wine, Hannibal knows the plate that was just destroyed. Knows it intimately, remembers carrying it back nearly by hand, bundled cautiously in his carry-on from a particular trip to Lille. Remembers finding it there in a marketplace amongst other antiques that had made their way over from Belgium, an early 18th century Tournai-borne serving dish with elegantly sparse peonies painted blue in the center.

Hannibal snarls, no longer silent in doing so, and turns sharply to find the boy in the kitchen.

The speed of him still comes to a stop as he stares Will down baleful, teeth bared and ready to unleash hell on him. He only pauses when he sees the accompaniment to the plate, a fragile bowl of a remarkably similar style but brought to life in China instead.

An incidentally matched pair separated by half the world.

Seeing it there in the boy’s furious fingers, Hannibal recalls the charm that overtook him for the better part of an afternoon, to think that two such similar creations could come into existence so far apart, paired pleasurably together as though they had been made a matched set.

The irony of Will’s chosen outlet for destruction is not lost on him.

“Do not.”

A dire warning, hands tightening into fists, flexing into a stretch again.

Will tilts his head, shifting his hand to hold the bowl precariously between two fingers.

"Why?" he asks, tone infuriatingly pleasant. “Are you fond of it?"

He directs his eyes to the shards on the floor, rocking still in the sticky wine beneath, before turning back to Hannibal.

"Oh, I'm sorry, you were fond of that too? My mistake." He twists his wrist gently, the bowl still held, but barely.

"It seems such a waste," he sighs, brows drawn in a fantastic mockery of apology, "to not have them match."

Without another word he lets the bowl go.

A blur of movement around the island before the bowl even shatters against the ground. It does, though, alongside its once-separated, then reunited, and now departed sibling, and Hannibal growls, a frighteningly primal lack of control in it. Will moves quick enough to put the island between them again, narrowly missing the broken glass at his feet, and bolts as soon as Hannibal moves to chase.

Faster than most, Will flees from the kitchen but not without knocking down another bottle of wine behind him. Hannibal only just misses it, slowed enough by the dodge that Will is halfway to the front door when Hannibal finally catches him.

A brutal arm snares around Will’s neck to jerk him backwards off his feet, the other around his waist, letting him dangle and kick and struggle.

Faster than most, but not fast enough.

“It has been such a waste,” Hannibal whispers in agreement, sliding his higher arm to grasp the boy’s jaw in his hand. A trembling tension, seams snapping, a forced and tangible resistance to snapping the boy’s neck then and there.

And despite Hannibal’s goading, his taunting, his desire to feel this adrenaline singing fresh through him to break up the nightly refrains, the curiosity to push this boy’s buttons to see what would happen, Hannibal knows as he catches the back of the boy’s head with his other hand and hesitates, that he has lost.

A motion shown to Will many times before, a quick turn, effortless, no strength needed to separate vertebrae and sever the spinal cord, and one that even now in this blind animal fury Hannibal suddenly cannot perform. The boy’s words echo.

_You can’t kill me._

Will’s breath hitches, panic catching up to the familiar motion, the ice of fear tickling his bones before he twists, ducks his head and manages to bring his hands up to claw at the arm around his middle, just enough to dig his nails in, enough for it to hurt.

He thrashes, twists, lifts his legs to add weight to how Hannibal holds him, to unbalance him. He kicks forward, catches the wall and shoves against it hard to push Hannibal back.

No more words. As Hannibal’s animal anger holds him, so Will’s pushes him to live as he has so often before this. As he had escaped men who fought him and pinned him, damaged him in turn, as he had fought Hannibal twice before, survived then as well.

He knows, deep, that he won’t die, that Hannibal knows his words are true, that Will’s game, so long ago challenged, so long ago revealed, is in full swing and that Will is winning. He knows, he knows, he knows and yet the idea of some other boy drawing that smile from Hannibal in the morning, some other boy marking him with desperate nails, some other boy beneath him spreading his legs and begging and begging and begging him and living…

Will whines, wraps his legs back around Hannibal’s, feet hooked behind his knees, and jerks, aiming to unbalance, to bring them both to the ground.

Hannibal’s knees drive against the ground as he’s pulled down, holding tight to Will even as they sprawl across the tile. He bares his teeth, lips curled, and fights to reclaim the boy when Will throws his entire weight behind breaking free, bring up sharp elbows behind himself, catching Hannibal in the jaw hard enough to surprise him.

Hard enough to infuriate him that much more.

He snatches Will by the hair, longer now than the last time they found themselves in such a state and that much easier to pull until it nearly comes out in a handful. He brings the boy’s face down hard against the tile and shoves his other hand against Will’s shoulder to press and pin him to the floor.

Hannibal forces a few unsteady breaths and then leans low, cheek against Will’s hair, mouth pressed to the boy’s ear.

“Is it truly such a surprise that I would share my evening with one far more gentle, more becoming than this?” He grits his teeth as Will struggles beneath him. “Someone who lays soft and pliant, worshipful, rather than destructive and obscene?”

He brings Will’s cheek down against the tile again, a quick jerk, not to damage but to startle.

“A mystery for the ages, Will.”

“Fuck you.”

It’s spat, heavy with anger, with the knowledge of what that word will get him and utter uncare for it. Will’s lips part, breathing against the tile and feeling the cool reflect back against his fevered skin.

He can get his hands under him but not much else, Hannibal holding him pinned the way he is, heavier, stronger, a seasoned killer where Will is just getting his feet, just learning, just starting his own.

Yet that doesn’t matter either.

“I gave you worshipful,” he snarls. “You’ve seen me worshipful, you’ve felt me pliant. You entertained yourself by painting bruises on my skin. By darkening flesh beneath your nails.”

Will makes a soft noise of pain as he’s held and pushed harder.

“You relish in destruction, Hannibal, you don’t create. You’re a creature of death and death becomes you.”

He laughs then, that strangely manic, pleased noise.

“I just gave you the one sacrifice your altar needs. Death begets death in a matching set.”

Hannibal jerks Will’s head back roughly, enough that he feels curls of hair loosen between his fingers, and turns the boy onto his back. He sits heavy across Will’s stomach and catches the boy’s across his jaw, pooling the taste of blood in his mouth before he can pin the boy’s wrists to the floor. Holding them in one hand, Hannibal draws his other hand along his own mouth.

Blood darkening the spaces between his teeth, streaked bright against his knuckles.

“It’s the destruction that you worship,” Hannibal hisses, spitting a mouthful of blood to the tile beside the boy’s head. “You ache for it. Beg for it. You are not satisfied unless I am all but ripping you to pieces with my bare hands and you do everything in your godforsaken power to earn it.”

A rough slap cracks across the boy’s mouth before he can speak again, and Hannibal pushes that same hand up into his hair.

Not brutal now, but firm, warm, tucking a curl of hair behind his ear and forcefully softening his expression as he looks down at Will. A look he’s seen before, tender with adoration, not usually turned towards him as an affectation but certainly one now. A mockery of love like that he shares with other boys, a sick gentleness to the tone, to the touch he lets settle into Will’s skin while holding him to the floor with blood spilled around them.

“Is this what you prefer, Will? If you are so envious of how I treat them, then I can certainly treat you the same way. Tell you that I would move the world for you, that no one has ever mattered more. That your beauty is unparalleled and to look upon it for the rest of my life would be insufficient for how long it deserves.”

Another brutal slap, to shock Will from the moment, sending the boy coughing beneath him.

“And I can kill and consume when the poetry has ended.”

Another strike, backhanded now, higher than perhaps intended and crossing the boy’s cheekbone. A black eye will raise there, dark and angry, but Hannibal does not stop, leans close, adjusts to bend his spine to breathe against Will’s cheek.

“Or I could continue to show you, rather than tell, in the only language that we truly understand. But tonight, your envy has shown your choice in this.”

Will tries to spit again, watches Hannibal turn his head. His ears ring, his head is throbbing, still dizzy from when Hannibal had struck him against the floor.

He endures another strike, keeps his head turned where the blow lands it, and closes his eyes to catch his breath. He can feel the anger radiating off of Hannibal above him, and yet he still knows, still understands that he won’t kill him.

Will moans, a soft sound, a gentle thing, and without warning bucks up hard, enough, to feel Hannibal’s hand press to his wrists for balance, the other out quickly to catch himself against the floor. Will draws up a knee and shoves, bends his back to unseat Hannibal further and thrashes until he can turn to his side, curl up.

It’s harder to hold him this way, and when Hannibal lets go of his arms to catch his hips, Will launches forward, a sharp strike of his own against Hannibal’s face, leaving the angry red marks of nails behind before he scoots back, kicks out, enough to work himself free and scramble to his feet.

He stumbles perhaps three steps before he’s caught again.

But it’s three steps he’d won.

Three steps no other boys had been allowed.

Will is hoisted again, toes dragging across the floor, and Hannibal presses his cheek to Will’s, grinning now with the thrill of the hunt, the fight in his prey, blood warm between their skin as he nuzzles close, a blasphemy of the tenderness he offered earlier when Will first arrived home.

“When will you learn not to turn your back to me in your flight, dear boy? You’ve at least a chance of contact, a lucky shot perhaps if you face me,” Hannibal purrs, pushing Will’s hair back from his face and lifting him higher with an arm around his waist.

“Should I let you go, again, so you can learn before I catch you, again?”

A mistake, perhaps, to not hold the boy’s jaw in place. His head jerks back, contact wet and sudden with Hannibal’s nose, enough to earn a trickle of blood from it and enough to move Hannibal so that Will’s feet graze the ground.

Time seems to slow around them as Hannibal feels his pulse raise, his adrenaline elevate to an almost transcendental state. Ever curious, ever fascinated by the possibilities of what may happen, there is a moment of stillness, and he decides to let the boy go.

Utter calm as Hannibal regards him, lightless eyes wide and intrigued by what fight is left in the boy. An animal movement, nearly reptilian, as his head tilts and he steps forward, inhuman in his hunt. Primordial. Primal. And vastly more terrifying than when he snarled and spit and struck.

“What now, Will?” Hannibal asks softly. “How will the evening end?”

Will sniffs, draws a hand over his face with a wince. Blood just from his lip, but enough. He aches. Everything is hot. He directs his eyes up to the monster in front of him, no longer a man, no longer human here, in this house that is all shadow and no masks.

He swallows, blinks.

How _will_ the evening end? How can it?

The hunger is back, seeping from Hannibal’s pores like a scent itself, and Will is intoxicated by it, hypnotised.

He licks the blood from his lips, smiles wide enough to show his teeth, blood between, pink over white.

Will shifts his weight, rolls the shoulder Hannibal had struck so hard to the floor to pin him, and arches his back in a stretch.

“Must it end?” he purrs, gentle bouncing on the balls of his feet before he shifts, bites his lip, and bolts through the living room and on to the study.

Hannibal draws a breath, lets it linger in his lungs until it feels like fire, like the blood burning beneath his skin. He counts the beats of his heart until he reaches seventeen.

One for every year this insufferable boy has walked the planet, and Hannibal yet to decide if there will be more beyond it.

It’s a comfortable enough lie for the moment.

He does not run yet, expecting the boy to hide. To think himself clever, as he so often does, and endeavor to surprise Hannibal as though every inch of the house is not intimately familiar to him.

Hannibal’s pleased to discover a misjudgement of Will’s intent, peering through to the living room, when he hears footsteps still sticky with wine break across the tile behind him.

He spins, slides, almost catching the boy as he grabs for the door to the garden. Will wheels away from him, and grins back with a perverse delight, mirthless and manic.

A low sound, a sound a human shouldn’t be able to make, shouldn’t ever have cause to drag out of the tenebrous history of their evolution, as Hannibal tears after Will up the stairs. The boy is delightfully fast for the abuse he’s taken, all lanky lithe limbs like a gazelle, beautiful and yet perhaps still capable of goring Hannibal, should he not catch him well.

But he will catch him well, Hannibal knows this for a certainty, and he spins fast around the doorway into the study, banging the doors closed behind and trapping Will inside.

He does not move, curls a lip, breathes in the sweat, the adrenaline, fear and arousal and hate and desire. His hands clench, and he imagines the boy’s throat beneath them, remembers the feeling of a leather belt wrapped around his own.

_A matching set._

Within, there is no sound, not of fast breathing or quick steps against the carpet. Almost as though there is no one there at all, certainly not a dangerous, sweet, exhausted boy. Hannibal considers what options are left to the boy. Considers how he could attempt the window, find it sealed, attempt the door leading to the closet running the length of the room for storage - but no, the boy would not be so stupid as to utterly bracket himself that way.

Hannibal takes a step closer, deliberately heard.

Still no sound, still no movement through the crack in the door he can see.

Another step. Another.

He pushes the door open quickly, harsh, and catches the sharp intake of breath as it strikes the boy behind it. A moment of hesitation before the door is shoved back just as hard and Will launches himself around it and out.

A flight towards the stairs again, more options there, less trapped than upstairs with windows that don’t open and so few places in which to hide.

Will doesn’t make it past the landing before Hannibal’s got him by the shirt collar. He pulls back suddenly, and for an instant, Will is airborne, feet out from under him, before the stairs come up hard against his back.

A breathless moment, air knocked from his lungs, head spinning and vision darkening around the edges. Will forces a gasp of air and in the moment it takes him to catch it Hannibal has slid down the stairs beside him, over him, a pressing weight against his body that smothers what little air he’s managed to regain.

Blood beneath Hannibal’s nose and smeared across his mouth, a curl of amusement with teeth stained dark just visible clenched past parted lips.

He waits, motionless, body coiled to stop another strike, to pull the boy back his hair if he tries to scramble, to shift a leg against him if he tries to drive his knee up again. Forcing eye contact now, his pupils smothering out any of the gentleness Will saw that morning before he left, skin almost cool to the touch with the depth of Hannibal’s focus, a fearsome redirection of energies to where he most needs it.

“I do not create,” Hannibal recalls the boy’s words softly. “I destroy.” A curious tilt of his head, taking in the boy’s breath panting beneath him.

“Which do you prefer, Will, in your envy, in your spite? I will feed you poetry and falsehoods and end you as I ended that boy tonight, or the lessons may continue, and all that comes with them.”

For a moment Will’s breathing stops, lips parted, eyes wide. He’d known, just as he’d known he wouldn’t die, that the boy before him had. That he wasn’t upstairs reclining in the silk sheets. That he was most likely in the basement, no longer himself, no longer human. Something else entirely.

Destruction and creation are the same thing after all.

“Create me,” Will breathes, and when his hands come up they’re only there to grip against Hannibal’s sides. A swallow clicks his throat, eyes unblinking and up, relishing in the pain, the throbbing sensation, the hunger pressing down on him.

“Ruin me, annihilate me.”

Will’s eyes flick down to Hannibal’s lips, stained red but not broken, not hurt like Will’s are. He licks his own and surges up, lips to Hannibal’s, parted and open and hot.

An instinctive jerk, Hannibal grabs the boy hard by the throat, mouths together, teeth against lips and tongues against teeth and breath joining in low sounds of need between them. He squeezes, can’t resist, can only just restrain himself from crushing the life out of the boy beneath him but pulls back.

He tells himself it’s his choice not to end him. Tells himself that the boy has sorely misjudged him, and that his words are wrong. And Hannibal knows even as he thinks it that it’s a lie.

Hannibal parts the kiss breathless, to suck against the split of Will’s lower lip, to let the blood bloom against his tongue. He pushes his sweater, the shirt beneath it, roughly over his head, baring him, his body already stormy with bruises against which Hannibal sinks his hands, pushing the boy to sit on the step above him.

“I will,” Hannibal finally sighs, tremulous. The same promise as ever, as always, until one or both tire of this teaching and bring an end to it.

But the time isn’t now, tonight, not when he can taste the swelling of skin where Will’s eye will blacken and not when he can kiss and bite leaving marks down Will’s chest to sink his teeth above the boy’s heart and not when they’re both so brutally hard that the only way to walk away from this is sated, fully, on all the other will yield to them.

Fast fingers work free the fly of Will’s jeans, tug them roughly down his thighs. A groan, aching against Will’s mouth, foreheads pressed together, when Hannibal catches in the smell of semen, sweat, spit still stuck to the boy’s skin. A curl of lips in a possessive snarl to match the sudden need to replace those scents with his own.

His student, his boy, his Will.

His alone.

Will’s lips part on a silent sound of pleasure, a shiver drawing down his skin, over his spine. His hands settle on Hannibal’s shoulders, up to cup his face and he says nothing.

The night had been slow for him, the man determined to fuck Will only if he ‘earned’ it, with a collar around his throat just a little too tight, with a tail plugged into his ass holding him open. Crawling on his hands and knees to suck the man’s cock, bend further to drink from a bowl on the floor.

A good dog. A good boy.

Will rocks forward, thighs spreading for Hannibal, a needy, greedy gesture, a demand rather than an offering.

He thinks of Hannibal’s words, of how each was true, that Will does everything in his power to force this from him, to anger him for pain, to outdo himself twisting for his attention. Doing everything and anything in his power to not be forgotten, to not be uninteresting.

“Fuck me,” he moans, the French soft between them, trembling with the words, with the power radiating off of Hannibal.

_You are not satisfied unless I am all but ripping you to pieces with my bare hands._

“Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me…”

Hannibal’s hand is halfway to Will’s face when he stays it. Sees the boy flinch before the blow, a wince, a grin, something in between, but the strike does not connect. He traces the back of his hand down the bruises already dark against Will’s cheek instead, an instant of tenderness before he squeezes the boy’s chin in his hand, thumb pressing past his swollen lip and into his mouth, blood warm against his skin.

A better idea than the usual punishment, Hannibal considers, as he shoves his boxers down his hips, peeling them from his legs as he climbs readily along the length of the boy shuddering wounded and eager beneath him. A handful of hair grabbed, tilted back to watch when Hannibal settles with his knees on either side of the boy’s head, a stair above him.

Will’s fingers clench against the carpeted step where he sits, breath warm against the length of Hannibal’s cock as he turns his eyes upward.

“I will,” Hannibal breathes softly again. “Your mouth, I think. A better use for it than pouring out filth.”

Will swallows, eyes wide and up, confused for a moment. He’s done this before, he’s been forced to do this before, he’s enjoyed it, hated it, but he had always done it well. Hannibal knows this, he’s felt Will’s mouth against him countless times already.

He nods quickly, blinks, parts his lips to take Hannibal in, eyes closing to suck against the head, but he finds that the man doesn’t want that today, not the gentleness, not the teasing and vision of Will’s jaw slack to take him. He pushes harder, far enough to make Will gag, to send his eyes open wide as he tries to pull back and finds cruel fingers in his hair holding him still.

A gentle shushing, the softness juxtaposed cruelly with the way Hannibal rolls his hips forward, feels Will gag genuinely against him, and does it again.

Will’s hands come up against Hannibal’s thighs, clinging, trying to push him off, trying to twist away from the feeling, from the gagging the choking, trying to find a way to breathe.

Without thought he brings his teeth against skin, in panic, a reflex.

He has not been given a chance to pretend, a chance to fake the choke, to keep himself comfortably unharmed as he feigned fear and agony.

No. This is real, and Will whines in discomfort and tries to pull off again.

The press of teeth finds Hannibal’s hand beneath Will’s chin, broad, brutally strong. He pushes his fingers between the boy’s teeth, squeezing his cheeks to force his mouth open, unable to close past the grip holding his jaw in place.

Unrelenting pressure, heavy against Will’s tongue, pressing rough against the back of his throat, forcing it, hardly giving him time to settle, to relax enough to open and accept it. Each gag brings tears to the boy’s eyes, each tear that skims his cheek draws a groan from Hannibal.

Will shoves hard against Hannibal’s thighs, clawing his hips, his ass, drawing blood beneath sharp nails. Desperate now, quick fearful breaths panted through his nose and eyes finally turning upward, a plea, a gagging whimper, before Hannibal finally pulls out enough to let him breathe.

He doesn’t yet release his jaw, doesn’t pull back past the head of his cock resting against the boy’s tongue to feel the trembling breath drawn in around it. A tension, pleased, tightening the corners of his eyes. Hannibal strokes his thumb once along the boy’s cheek, and presses in again, groaning.

This time Will opens his throat without struggle, stretches his tongue, breathes through his nose… and still gags when Hannibal keeps pushing.

It’s certainly a punishment, this cruelty of endurance. Something Will is sure he won’t bring Hannibal to again in a hurry. His throat hurts, burns with the acid creeping up that he forces back over and over. His jaw aches from how hard it’s held open, how much he’s forced to take and how hard.

He moans, finds Hannibal’s smile widening at the sound, and no mercy for it.

The thrusts get faster, Will closes his eyes and sobs, shaking with the need for air, to stop, to rest…

When Hannibal finally releases him, moments, hours later, Will coughs, brings a hand to his mouth to hold back the nausea, to soothe the thudding of his heart as he sucks in air like a drowning man.

When he looks up, his eyes are liquid, tears unable to dry on his face from how he’s crying, uncontrollable and genuine.

It’s almost tender, the way Hannibal runs a hand along Will’s cheek, traces a thumb through the trail of spit and blood glistening on the boy’s chin to gather it and press it back to the boy’s mouth, feels the pulse of him racing in the pressure of Will’s lips as he closes them obediently, sucking softly.

A quiet whimper draws a soft shushing sound from Hannibal, pushing past his lips with his thumb in a slow, deep rhythm.

“You asked for this,” Hannibal murmurs in French, almost gentle in the way he reminds him. “Begged for this. All of it.” He replaces his thumb with his fingers, three of them now, picking up the same rhythm and Hannibal sighs in harsh delight as the boy takes this as well.

Blackened eye and bruised cheek, tears spilling freely now, split lip bleeding slow and body bruised from the rough falls and cruel fingers that caught him, held him, kept him from fleeing away from what they both know he aches for, cries out for, misbehaves to receive again and again.

“Beautiful boy.” A low growl, at odds with the elegant French that curls past Hannibal’s own swollen mouth, darkened into a bruise from where Will lashed out and caught him. “Cruel boy.”

Rough fingers yank the boy’s pants further down his legs, and Hannibal grins, an ugly bloody thing but altogether painfully genuine when Will draws up his legs to kick them free and spread his thighs again, wider.

Hannibal slides lower again, between the boy’s legs, and with hardly a prelude pulls his spit-slick fingers from Will’s mouth to force them instead against his opening, parting him wide.

“You relish in destruction,” Hannibal growls against Will’s mouth, stealing the pained cry that parts it with a driving kiss.

Will brings a hand up to grip his hair, tug it as his head tilts back, as his lips spread over blood-stained teeth and he pants in pain, but doesn’t move away, doesn’t make Hannibal stop. He doesn’t deny his words.

A cruel twist of Hannibal’s hand and Will sobs again, finally giving voice to the unvoiced question in Hannibal’s words.

“Yes.”

It’s breathless, wanton, Will’s free hand down between his legs, against his thigh as he grips the stair he sits on not to move, feeling Hannibal’s hand shift against his wrist, sharp thrusts, brutal things, fingers stretching Will almost mercilessly.

His cock leaks against his stomach with every push.

He lets go of Hannibal’s hair to curl his hand instead around the banister, fingers digging into the wood. His cheeks are flushed, tears drying against them, now, when he’s had the time to breathe, lips parted on quick pants and moans of need.

“Please.”

It’s all Hannibal wants to hear, needs to hear and this need unsettles him in its unfamiliarity, a driving desire for the boy to understand, to know, to see what it is that makes Will - what makes them both - so different from all others.

Better than a rent boy and a client, better than a patient and a psychiatrist, better than those they fuck and those they slaughter. Apex predators, hunters of men, communicating in ways only they understand, as they can be with no one else in the world.

He lines himself up and pushes into the boy without a pause to let him stretch, unrelenting, to hear the boy gasp against his throat as Hannibal leans over him. A brutal pain that rips sharp to curl Will’s spine arching up from the stairs and brings him pressed against Hannibal, but Will doesn’t beg for mercy, doesn’t plead and coax. No, Will wraps his legs shaking around Hannibal’s hips, his arms around his neck, to cling to him and to bring him closer even still.

_Ordo ab chao_.

Hannibal breathes Will’s name against his mouth, a reverence for this boy that can take so much and withstand it so proudly, the way no one else’s name parts his lips, steals his breath, makes his blood sing rushing in his veins.

He is certain now, as he drives into the boy and feels him beg for more, harder, please, yes, Hannibal is certain that he will not win this game. It will be Will’s hands around his throat in the end, and when he cannot lift his own hands to end the ceaseless joyous warfare between them, it will be Will’s name that falls again from Hannibal’s lips as it does now, a shaking weak thing as Hannibal buries himself and finishes, gasping rough, spilling warmth with a shudder.

Will shudders, follows as Hannibal bends him, feels his own release slip under his skin, through his bones, moaned through his mouth and into Hannibal’s. The stairs dig into his back, sharp and cruel as the man above him, and Will whines, wriggles in pain and displeasure but still refuses to ask for mercy. His hands crawl over Hannibal’s back, fingers soft, up to his hair, tugging gently.

Blood between them, bones and skin, and yet they are so much more than such things to the other. More than sweat and semen and spit.

And Will kisses him again, a deep and needy thing, quick pants through his nose, gentle sounds escaping him.

An arm wraps around Will’s waist, and Hannibal turns them both. He sits against the stair in Will’s place, keeps the boy close, wrapped around him still, straddling his lap. The violence flees from them like footsteps fading as their hearts finally begin to slow, and something like transcendence settles cool against their skin.

He allows the kiss, lets Will take what he needs from it. Slows it, slows it, gentler now, soft as the fingers that push a curl of Will’s hair behind his ear, following down along the curve of his neck, to rest above his heart, palm against his chest.

A sigh as Will leans into him. Hannibal keeps his arm around the boy, rubs a hand along his back, bruised and burnt from being thrust against the carpeted stairs. He rests his cheek against Will’s hair, speaking in quiet French beside his ear.

“Do not ask to be treated as I treat them,” Hannibal murmurs. “Nor think that I would ever elevate them as I do you.”

Will moans softly, presses close to Hannibal’s chest, body trembling from the residual adrenaline, the pain that sends his body into a strange sort of numbness.

“I can’t move.” It’s a sigh, an admission rather than a complaint, soft and warm, and Will presses his lips to Hannibal’s neck in an open-mouthed kiss. He doesn’t want Hannibal to go, to leave, to give Will freedom in a house so large he can feel his pulse through the walls when he’s alone.

“Take me with you,” he murmurs, nose gentle against Hannibal’s cheek, swallowing softly. “To your room, to your bed.” He bites his lip, brows furrowing in gentle pain when he bites the cut there.

“Ours,” Hannibal reminds him, before shifting off the stair. A mild enough remark that carries more to it than his tone allows, before he presses a kiss to Will’s cheek, a few more for good measure, tasting the remnants of tears there, of fear and desire and fury and release.

It’s an uneasy movement, his own body exhausted from the forgettable boy earlier in the night and from this unforgettable one now, his Will that he hoists in his arms with one secured beneath him, the other spread across his back. Steady steps to the bedroom, though Hannibal finds that as he tries to pour Will into the bed, he does not let Hannibal go so readily, arms and legs looped around him with as much strength as Will can muster.

Hannibal sighs, and sits on the edge of the bed.

A consideration, brows drawing in for a moment, before Hannibal finally speaks again.

“Shall I wait next time, for you to be there?”

Will blinks, wonders at the words, at the offer. Sets his teeth against the inside of his lip and presses down just to feel that pressure there. After a moment he nods, just once.

“Show me, just once, how you do it,” Will asks softly. He doesn’t want to grow burdensome with his presence, ironic considering his earlier outburst, but hunts are strangely sacred between them, kills are their own, spaces their own. This just the place they share after, share for everything else.

Hannibal doesn’t show the gratitude, the relief he feels when Will does not take more than is offered, does not make demands that in time would prove unsustainable and invasive for them both. As he has never asked Will to stop what he does. As he would not be able to stop what he does himself.

He will give him that, though, as Will had shared a hunt with him. An agreement, hummed soft against the boy’s temple as he kisses it.

“Next time, then.”

Will winces when he moves from Hannibal onto the bed and turns to his stomach. He curls an arm under himself for comfort, to rest his chin against his hand and keep his eyes on Hannibal. Oddly domestic. Strangely intimate. Every bruise feels like a caress against him, every blow a memory he won’t soon file away. He needs this, he aches without it. The victory he’d felt earlier in knowing his power, feeling it paralyze Hannibal and envelope him, it’s fading now in the soft thrums of his pulse in his ears, but he will not forget it, and he will use it again.

But for now, he wants soft hands where they had moments before been cruel. Warm lips that had poured unkindness in his ears.

He thinks of the shattered porcelain downstairs, thinks how the shards will never join without a wound always there, always visible and sharp where it had once been flawless.

“ _Kintsugi_ ,” he murmurs, blinking to direct his eyes to Hannibal again. “For the things I shattered.”

Fingers curl through Will’s hair, stroke it softly back from his face. He wonders where the boy learned such a term. Wonders as he traces with fingertips the damage Will wears fresh on his face whether such a thing can work for people, as well.

Breaking and rebuilding. Destroying and creating.

“You may try, if it suits you to do so.” A stiffness in tone, just a snap of tension, a pull still sharp from seeing his things destroyed, irreplaceable in meaning far beyond their physical presence.

Parallels, here, Hannibal is certain merit more exploration when he is more able to afford it the contemplation it deserves.

He stands, shrugging his shoulders to release an ache. “You will not be able to see tomorrow if you don’t ice your eye.”

Will keeps his eyes on Hannibal before blinking and looking away, resigned to having to wait for Hannibal to return at his leisure. It doesn’t escape him that the man will care for him now, look after his wounds that he had caused, that Will had begged for, that he will beg for again.

He sighs, closes his eyes as Hannibal leaves, as he runs a hand through Will’s hair before he goes.

Will floats in a strange semi-consciousness, wondering if the sheets had been changed after Hannibal had fucked that boy against them. He wonders if he truly had treated him so gently before he’d killed him, if that had not been a lie to just anger Will and rile him. He wonders why Hannibal had bothered, what it had meant to him that Will had drawn his anger like a fine point of a blade across his own skin.

He wonders, he dozes. When Hannibal returns, Will pushes himself up to kiss him again, deep and slow, and says nothing.

Hannibal has gathered a small tray, set now beside the bed. The wine has been cleaned, and the pieces of the antique servingware that Hannibal is certain Will will not remember or mention again has been set aside, on the off chance that perhaps he does.

He coaxes the boy to his back when the kiss finally parts, and the bag of frozen peas stings against Will’s skin despite the soft cloth wrapped around it.

“Nothing I would let touch my food,” Hannibal admits, adjusting the weight of it, how it settles against the boy’s eye. “But you never know when a lucky hit will land,” he adds, and offers a faint smile in exchange as Will lifts a hand to hold it against his cheek.

A touch entirely unlike those that sought to rip and bruise and throttle and tear as Hannibal studies the boy’s lip, not deep enough to merit more than a smear of ointment, styptic and antibiotic. He rubs it in gently with the pad of his thumb, until it is absorbed.

The rest of the injuries are bruises and scrapes - the boy will hurt tomorrow, certainly, ache and moan and complain and fuss - and Hannibal will tend to him then as now. As eager to see him healthy and exuberant as he is to see him broken and sobbing, each necessary parts of the greater whole.

Content, it seems, with his minor triage, Hannibal finally settles in beside the boy, watching him with darkened eyes, touching his cheek gently with the backs of his fingers.

“Lucky,” Will repeats, voice roughened and tired, heavy. He seeks out with his free hand and finds Hannibal close, curls it against him in an awkward touch that bends his elbow and curves his fingers against his chest.

He hums, exhausted, body thrumming with life and pain, and shifts to lie closer against Hannibal, closing his eyes now to let sleep take him when it would.

He tries not to think of how Hannibal’s hands had felt holding his jaw up, tight in his hair, how close he had come to losing his life. He tries not to think about the fact that in that moment he had stopped struggling.

He wonders if Hannibal had noticed.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hannibal does not set him down yet, the nearness too intoxicating even after only a week apart, a tedious week despite the early arrival of spring that yielded flowers unfurling into fragrant release and leaves uncurling in countless shades of green over sun-dappled walkways.
> 
> He thought of Will, entirely, at every step, and the torrid colors and smells of spring’s fresh fertility were found sorely lacking by compare.

It is understandable that Will feels a sudden sense of panic when he finds after class that he’s received a voicemail, instructing him to come to the house when his lectures are finished for the day.

Nearly a week passed since they last spoke, when Hannibal returned Will restless to his own apartment, with no more explanation than going on a business trip, out of the country. Unreachable, with no time given as to Hannibal’s return.

Nearly a week passed since Will felt healed enough from their last time together to even attend lectures again, finally going not out of any desire to be there, but out of a malingering need to please Hannibal, even in his absence. He had even made an effort to complete his class work remotely while his bruises healed, while his cuts stitched themselves together, kintsugi of a broken body rather than broken porcelain.

Although the message is politely conversational, a tone of unreadable neutrality, Will finds a fierce anxiety loosening in him as he plays it again and again, just to hear Hannibal’s voice. Days of a primal, lonely fear building noxious in his thoughts, keeping him from sleep, from even finding the motivation to hunt, an escalating feeling that his last defiance had finally been too much.

Disinterest in him at long last, so much so that Hannibal would rather simply leave than even bother to complete their contract together and kill him.

Abandonment, requiring expectations.

Will takes a deep breath and knocks on the door, resting his forehead against it, his shoulder. Seeking nearness to the home he feared lost to him, to the man within it. Whether invited here to be killed or not doesn’t matter, his thoughts feverish, flighty, filled with need and fear even still. He works his sweater sleeves over his fingers, rubs the threadbare knit between them, and startles from his anxious fidgeting when the locks click and the door opens.

A week too long apart. A day too long apart. Time, distance needed to replay the last time they were together, to scrutinize what stayed Hannibal’s hand so many times when the boy pushed so hard to drive him to a fury that would have seen anyone else dead a dozen times over.

No answers discovered, in truth, but rather an acute awareness of how dim even Paris’ lights seemed without the boy near him. A valuable realization, and a familiar but undefinable pull in Hannibal’s chest as he sees Will wide-eyed before him again.

“Hello, Will.”

Will says nothing, no greeting, no demands, he simply steps closer, surprised when Hannibal steps back to lets him and closes the door, and Will pulls Hannibal to him to kiss.

Eyes closed, lips parted and breath coming in quick short huffs against Hannibal’s cheek. Will brings a hand to hold Hannibal’s tie, not pull it, not twist it from its pristine position but just hold, press closer that way, connect.

He shivers when he feels Hannibal’s hands against him, heavy and warm and so familiar it aches to feel them, and then he gives up the gentle pretense, the politeness, the civility, and pulls Hannibal so close to him he almost unbalances, setting his hand with a thump against the door behind Will and nearly pinning him to it.

When they break to breathe, Will draws his nose alongside Hannibal's with a gentle sound.

Hannibal allows a smile against the boy’s cheek, and chases his mouth into another kiss. Lingering slow, burning like embers long stoked in their absence from each other.

He can taste the fear in him, not the sharp metallic flare of their play together, but a sustained burn, acrid and lingering. Days of panic, of acceptance, of denial all dry against Hannibal’s tongue as it presses against Will’s own, driving him back against the door. Not roughly, but firmly now, to feel relief flood through his jagged pulse instead of terror.

“I owe you another dinner,” Hannibal finally says, breathless, pressing his forehead to Will’s and closing his eyes. “Let me take you.”

Will smiles, for a moment entirely genuine in his responses, relaxing back into himself after a week of tension and sleepless nights and blurs of study he can’t now remember. He remembers the conversation regarding dinner, requested when this wasn’t as complicated as it’s grown, when all they were, were an outlet for the other, a thing to impress and play with, both.

“It’s still too early for dinner,” Will murmurs, but he doesn’t object, doesn’t let go of Hannibal beyond splaying his hand against him rather than gripping his shoulder.

He feels as though he’s underwater, as though everything is moving slowly and he barely cares. Will takes his fill of sensory memory, touches where he can reach, arches to press close to the warm body holding him still. His heart is slowing down now, to match Hannibal’s, a familiar partner rhythm.

Hannibal glances past Will, to the sunlight still streaming through the windows, and hums a note of amusement. Jet lag, perhaps, or simply an eagerness to be near his boy again enough that he’s thought of little else.

“Where do you want to take me?” Will asks finally.

“Anywhere you’d like,” Hannibal murmurs against his ear. A tenderness, warm contrast to the last time they were so close and chose to spend that time laying wounds upon the other.

“Not French,” he adds, after a moment of thought. “Paris has outdone me for it, for now.”

Will’s grin is stolen beneath another kiss as Hannibal rumbles beneath the spread of hands across him, small and fierce, hands that draw blood as readily as they draw pleasure. He ducks against Will’s shoulder, hands snaring him by the thighs to lift him easily against him and feel the boy’s legs wrap around his hips.

“Next time,” Hannibal murmurs, “I’ll take you with me.”

Will hooks his hands beneath Hannibal’s arms and raises his eyebrows. So he’d gone to Paris, had actually left the country to avoid Will for as long as he could stand it. He can feel the residual tremors through the fabric of Hannibal’s shirt still, knows that as Will had missed him Hannibal had missed Will in turn.

“Next time we’ll go to Greece,” Will suggests instead, rolling his hips only to feel the familiar closeness, for the moment content to just be here again, to smell the familiar warmth of this house that’s infused with so much devotion to its cleanliness and to the death within it, in its bowels and rotten foundations that hold strong.

“Greece, then,” Hannibal agrees, unable to resist imagining Will all but bare on the beaches, tanned and lovely in the particularly blue waters. “You will have to work on your modern, rather than ancient, however.”

He pulls the boy higher, even as Will rocks against him, to turn and carry him towards the stairs.

“We had to study your paper in class,” he mentions, amused, grin wide and head tilted. “It’s certainly interesting hearing you taught, Dr. Hannibal Lecter.”

“You went to class?” he asks, feigning surprise but not how pleased he is to hear it, or to hear his own praises, shameless in how it suits his ego to know it. “How did it make you feel to hear my name mentioned, as you sat amongst the students?”

Not peers, not other students, unable still to equate Will with any other be it in a lecture hall or on a street corner. He shifts the boy’s weight, past the spot they last joined brutal and cruel on the steps, tucking his nose against Will’s neck to breathe him in as he turns towards the bedroom.

“I had to bite my tongue,” Will replies, low, purring, pleased, lifting his chin as Hannibal presses close to him. He finds that he enjoys being carried by Hannibal, like something worthy of carrying, not a child in need of guidance and discipline.

Not today.

“Drew up a knee and pressed the heel of my hand against my cock where no one could see,” he continues, voice even but lower, sliding beneath the skin and warming against Hannibal where they press close as he’s carried.

“I think the lecturer was in awe, she wouldn’t stop bringing up your past accolades. Your past work. ‘An exquisitely refined thesis’,” Will quotes, rolling his hips, pleased when Hannibal’s hands tighten around him. “You’ll be on the exam, apparently.”

He laughs, delighted by that, by the simplicity of it all. He has read the thesis a few times, had read it before it had come up on their curriculum for the semester - he knew it well. He could taste Hannibal’s voice on it whenever he turned a page.

“I left the lecture early,” he admits.

Hannibal does not set him down yet, the nearness too intoxicating even after only a week apart, a tedious week despite the arrival of spring that yielded flowers unfurling into fragrant release and leaves uncurling in countless shades of green over sun-dappled walkways.

He thought of Will, entirely, at every step, and the torrid colors and smells of spring’s fresh fertility were found sorely lacking in compare to the sweetness of Will’s skin now caught beneath his mouth, drawing kisses against his neck.

“Insatiable boy,” comes the familiar chiding.

A turn towards the wall, beside the door, catching Will against it so that Hannibal can rub slow against him in response.

“It is a cruelty, that theory,” he continues, with no less fondness for the statement. “There was a resistance to it, initially, and still I receive letters proclaiming its inaccuracy. That all of humanity must be accepted by all the rest - that exclusion for the evolutionary benefit of the species is now rendered unfair for consideration in a society evolved to accept each and every member as contributory.”

He snorts, dismissing the thoughts wholesale. Another press of hips, mouth parting against Will’s neck, lips pulling against his skin to meet his mouth instead, a deeper kiss, more demanding before he parts again.

“It is beyond that, beyond any sense of a conscientious exclusion. It is an instinctive awareness that all are not equal or meaningful to us.” He presses his forehead to Will’s, seeks his eyes, tries to resist the quiet hunger roiling deep in his belly and fails. “That there will always be those whom we are above, and that we benefit extensively with this awareness and subsequent actions that dictate who remains with us, and who does not.”

A fierce kiss, sudden.

“How many times, Will, when you left your lecture early?”

Will grins, a lazy cat smile.

“Two,” he says quietly, tilting his head at the memory. Biting his fist as he stood in the toilets, one leg drawn up against the seat, leaning back over it in an arch, hand working quick between his legs to twist, pull, imagine Hannibal was watching him, directing, forcing him to move slowly so he could properly see him come apart.

“In the school building,” he adds, an almost casual implication of much more upon returning to his little apartment, closing up the doors, shedding his clothes on his way to the bedroom before arching, spreading his legs, teasing himself as he chewed the sheets to keep quiet, Hannibal’s voice in his mind there, as well, whispering clever, filthy things against his skin until Will had cum, untouched.

A groan, low, as Hannibal finds himself far harder than he intended to be so early in the evening. Envisioning the boy arched wanton, stifling his moans behind a bitten lip. Imagining him hurrying home after, half-hard and splitting himself wide as he could manage, begging Hannibal’s name.

He wonders, briefly, what might have happened did he not return. How long Will might have continued to feel himself ache in desire, wholly unsatisfied by whatever he could provide himself, trying desperately to meet his own satisfaction and utterly unable to find it in Hannibal’s absence.

Hannibal pulls the boy from the wall now, backing towards the bed until he feels it against the back of his knees and seats himself on the edge, hands gripping hard against Will’s waist.

He imagines that the boy would have felt it for as long as Hannibal would, a furious need for contact not with himself. He'd resisted the urge to perform such base actions in his Paris hotel room, letting his erections - caused by infuriatingly persistent memories of the boy - linger long until they finally faded. He had considered finding a boy and dismissed the idea as suddenly as it appeared, knowing it would only further inflame him in a way that could not be satisfied until now, here, beneath this glorious boy with his wild curls and bright grin.

Hannibal lays back beneath him, hands skimming up the boy’s ribs, his chest, his neck, to cup his cheeks and pull him low.

“And did you hunt?” he asks, a suggestion less of violence than of this desire raging rampant between them.

“Once,” Will murmurs, stretching his arms over his head, over Hannibal’s, against the bed and leaning in to kiss again. He had worked one job, put on the most innocent act he could to get the worst treatment and still found his only satisfaction in beating the man to a pulp with his bare hands at the end.

He had obediently cleaned the site, staged a break-in, and tossed away the valuables into multiple trash bins throughout the city as he rode the subway in a daze.

He spreads his thighs wider, slides his body fluidly over Hannibal, ducking his head as their lips part to breathe him in. He doesn’t ask if Hannibal hunted. He knows he didn’t, and if the man inquired as to how, Will wouldn’t be able to tell him.

Instinct.

He drops one hand to rub against Hannibal’s cock slowly, a deliberate tease, biting his lip before Hannibal can catch it between his own teeth and tug, smiling at him, eyes barely open.

“You gonna take me now?” he asks, voice smooth, quiet, inviting. “Or are you going to be patient through dinner?”

“I should do both,” Hannibal breathes softly against the boy’s mouth, body arching in a slow roll beneath him, up against the hand that strokes slow across his pants. “I have missed you.”

A confession, this, that despite how he had readied himself to say it still finds him unprepared to hear pass his own lips. Exposed, wary at the openness of it, Hannibal kisses the words away quickly against Will’s neck as the boy bows low over him.

“After dinner,” Hannibal finally decides, before Will can respond. “I’ve brought you something.”

His hands tighten to pull the boy’s hips down against him and roll, to feel that friction once more, before they finally release.

“In the closet, beside your things.”

Will hums, the sound just barely shivering with the pleasure coiling through his system, but he goes. Peels himself off of Hannibal’s body, feet setting quiet to the floor before he toes his boots off and pads to the closet on socked feet.

Within he finds the clothes he has started leaving here, two shirts, another pair of jeans - hung over a hanger, which never ceases to amuse Will - some boxers folded away on a lower shelf. And beside, a bag that looks familiar, though he has only ever seen its like once before. He swallows, bites his lip gently and presses a palm against it before taking the hanger from the rod it rests on and pulling it out.

Within he can see a suit, gray like his other had been but lighter, a heavier coat, cuffed sleeves and two buttons.

Will swallows again, a thick audible sound and presses his lips together before pushing the plastic up and aside to see the suit properly, to feel it against his fingers. The shirt with it is darker, a graceful contrast to how one usually expects to see gray worn.

“You got me a suit,” Will breathes, just to hear it spoken, to hear it come to life from his lips as it has against his hands.

Hannibal assents softly, resting back across the bed on his elbows to watch the boy, his boy, his Will run the fabric through his clever fingers. Worth the expense - any, really - to see the flood of color to his cheeks not drawn by liquor or lust but from somewhere far too distant to Hannibal at this point in his life. An entirely earnest expression, almost childishly shy, a disbelief in the furrow of his brow as Will recalls the last suit afforded him, ripped to pieces from his body and discarded.

Much as he thought himself to be in that moment, and others that followed.

Unworthy and uninteresting. Not worth the price of the fabric laid against his skin.

“From Paris,” Hannibal murmurs. “A particular tailor - Italian in provenance - with whom it is now exceedingly difficult to place a bespoke commission, since last I was there to see him.”

His tongue appears to dampen his lips, a curiously anxious moment that passes as quickly as it appeared.

“A deeper grey than the last, more inclined to blue to further draw out the depth of your eyes, the particular rose of your cheeks against your pallor. The cut tailored more narrow across the shoulders, just incrementally, to lengthen.”

Hannibal sighs, softly, something like an apology that unformed still exists between them.

“An improvement. A new creation born of past destruction.”

Will swallows again, allowing his heart to pound against his ribs, allowing himself to feel it, hear it, experience that stimulation. Very carefully he folds the plastic back over it and hangs it back amongst his things - his - before turning to return to bed, climbing over Hannibal and taking his face in his hands to kiss him.

It’s deep, slow, and filled with every word Will knows would sound sordid spoken aloud. He feeds him his gratitude, at the beautiful fabric, at the cut, the thought that went into making the suit, having it tailored, bespoke from someone near-impossible to get. He feeds him the apology, again, for the other; Will’s most hard-learned lesson.

When he pulls back he whines gently, a soft helpless little noise before he kisses Hannibal again, a softer touch this time, gentler, younger and yet not at all any less grateful as the first.

He relishes in the hands around him, arches against them, slides his own down to undo the buttons of Hannibal’s shirt, previous words forgotten of how they should wait, how they could be patient through dinner. He can’t be. He wants to feel the man’s skin against his own again, wants to taste his heartbeat.

“Thank you,” he breathes.

It is worth any effort for the instant that Hannibal shares the uncertainty of Will’s kiss. Equally unfamiliar with this new ground bridged over blood between them, a connection now undeniable after relentless attempts to smother and beat it out of the other, to break them and find them always unmoved. Even placing an ocean, continents between them proving insufficient to sever the pull that draws one to the other.

Hannibal’s fingers sink into Will’s hair to tug him close again, stealing the breath of his words in an achingly slow kiss, languorous and warm.

He lets their mouths part only enough to speak, soft urgent whispers against him as Will pushes his shirt back from his shoulders.

“There are keys,” Hannibal murmurs, “in the pocket. Not to every part of the house, but to the core of it, so that you may come and go as you please.”

A pause, rueful amusement.

“So long as you keep your insufferable hands from my antiques. Another broken dish and you will pay for it in blood,” Hannibal swears low, arms pulling firm around Will’s waist to kiss him soundly.

Will moans, low and pleased, and rocks against him harder, pulling back for just a moment to yank his sweater over his head, to undo three buttons on his own shirt before pulling that off as well, tossing both to the floor. He spreads his thighs more to let Hannibal shift more comfortably up the bed and then presses close to him again, feeling the warmth of the hair against his chest against him, the way his heart beats.

“Yes,” he breathes, agreement, understanding, permission, it doesn’t matter anymore, and Will grins when he kisses him again, when he kisses his way over Hannibal’s cheekbone, over his jaw, down under it to his neck and lower still. He doesn’t stop moving, doesn’t stop squirming and shifting against the man under him, hard already and rubbing against Hannibal to feel him just the same beneath.

“I missed you,” he murmurs. “I ached.”

A click in his throat as he swallows again before he arches his hips, holds himself up over Hannibal as the older man undoes his jeans, slips them over his thighs, pushes his boxers to follow. Will whimpers, on all fours, trembling, so pleased to feel those familiar rough hands against him again.

“I’d stretch myself so far, beg for it, whimper into the sheets and in my mind you never granted mercy.”

His breath hitches on the last word, lips parted as he arches his back deeper now, settles to rest with his elbows on either side of Hannibal’s head, his hips still in the air, high, legs spread.

“I’d fuck myself so slow,” he moans.

Hannibal feels the weight of cruelty against his tongue, begging to ask the boy what he would do if Hannibal never returned, if he left him here, alone and wondering and hurting for his touch, foreseeably.

He resists the urge to ask. Instead Hannibal lets the boy’s praise settle against him, stir his heart against his ribs and bring his pulse to a heady tempo. Hannibal skims his hands along the boy’s heaving sides, up across his back, tracing the bend of his spine back down to grip rough against the curve of his ass.

Kissing the boy’s hairless chest, the hollow of his throat to taste him there, the familiar sweep of his collarbones down to where his heart races fast beneath pale skin.

“Show me,” Hannibal asks softly, dark eyes alighting to meet Will’s own.

Another moan, skin flushed already at the keen attention, cock hard and leaking between them, Will licks his lips and regards the man under him for a long moment.

He knows every pane of that face, knows what he looks like when he’s pleased, know what his eyes do when he’s angry and hiding it behind his smile, a shell and a mask both. Will can read him as easily as he can read himself in the mirror, and now he looks nothing but pleased, darkly amused, curious. 

Will bites his lip and swallows quietly.

When he moves it’s to crawl to the side of Hannibal, stretch to reach the bedside table, second drawer, for the lube there. Then he settles back as he had been, on his knees for the moment, watching Hannibal under him as his fingers thoughtfully work the lid open and squeeze some slick onto his fingers.

Then he sets the tube aside, leans close again, messy hand out to the side to not touch Hannibal or the bed with, and grins.

“Tell me,” he offers in trade.

A rumble of agreement, an echo of the predator soothed still beneath the seams of his skin, as Hannibal eases back into the bed and rests his hands against the boy’s lean thighs to feel the muscles there, the downy hairs curled soft against warm skin.

“Two fingers,” Hannibal instructs softly. “Slowly, to begin.”

A prelude in the eager little noise that escapes when Will grins again, supporting his weight on his knees and the hand gripping the sheets. Glistening fingers disappear behind him as Hannibal watches, dark curiosity and lips parting in a sympathy as Will circles his fingers and presses inside, gasping.

Hannibal reaches between them, to trail the back of a finger along Will’s cock bobbing hard and unattended, to gather a bead of precum from it and bring it to his lips, pupils widening incrementally as he tastes the boy from his finger, intimately familiar.

The hand returns to grasp Will’s hip, to feel the rocking movements of it as the boy finds his rhythm.

“Three, Will.”

Will complies, without question, without argument, makes a soft noise at the pressure, the tightness of it. The familiar game he has taught himself to play in the week Hannibal was away. Now he meets the dark eyes fully, close, not shying away from the contact there, relishing the attention.

"Spread," comes the even command, and, obediently, Will does, groaning at the sensation, biting his lip as Hannibal continues the teasing caress of his cock with just the side of his finger, too gentle, tickling almost, and utterly impossible to ignore.

"Legs wider, Will. Arch your back."

A shuddering gasp escapes him and Will feels the color darken his neck from his cheeks, down lower to his chest as he sets first one leg out wider, then the other, bends lower to moan soft sounds against Hannibal’s lips, eyes hooded, dark, dark blue, and always on his.

It is agony to watch Will so near, so taut with his own pleasure, and to resist snaring him, turning him, wrestling him beneath and fucking him into the mattress. A week without release, unlike Will who indulged in it so wantonly, a week without deigning to attempt to find even a degree of the pleasure he knows his boy can wield for him so readily.

“Wider,” Hannibal breathes, chin lifting, grazing a kiss against Will’s gasping mouth. “Stretch yourself wider.”

He reaches between them, a twist of limbs that allows him to undo the fly of his own pants, otherwise fully dressed but for where Will unbuttoned his shirt, and with an aching groan Hannibal pulls his cock free, to rest twitching hard against his stomach. He bends his own body now, to feel the friction as his length brushes against Will’s, glancing down between their bodies to watch the movement and letting his eyes close then in resistance.

The sight of it, the heat of Will gasping breathless atop him, enough to finish Hannibal now if he decided to let it be so.

He does not, fights it to extend the sensation, keeps his tone gentle, soft-spoken, at odds with the words he offers against Will’s mouth.

“Can you add a fourth for me, Will?” A hand pushes Will’s unkempt curls of hair back from his face, holds them there with a firm grip. “I know you can.”

Another kiss, before Hannibal murmurs, “As deeply as you are able.”

Will whimpers, ducks his head to rest his forehead to Hannibal’s and shifts to do as instructed. And Hannibal can tell, the moment he obeys to add another, the moment he pushes far enough that it becomes a struggle, far as he can reach with the way he’s bent.

He swallows the sound Will makes, parts his lips wide to mirror what his fingers are doing, devours him as Will obediently takes himself apart. When he lets him go, Will moans his name, grits his teeth and pants softly against him.

“Please,” he breathes. “You, I want you…”

“You have me,” Hannibal assures him softly, taking in every sound that shudders from inside the boy, every twitch of muscle he can feel beneath the spanning rub of his hands along Will’s skin, memorizing it all, keeping it close.

There was a moment, when Hannibal departed, when he had convinced himself he did not need this. That he could go and stay for as long as he liked, come back when he pleased and simply forget the feel of Will’s hair soft against his cheek as it now, when the boy nuzzles aching against him. Forget the way his breath pools warm and cools against Hannibal’s skin, forget the way his heart pounds with abandon against his chest when Hannibal’s fingers slide over his body.

It’s bare now of bruises and marks, a canvas restored to newness, ready to be painted again, and the thought burns hot in the spiraling sensation of Hannibal’s stomach.

Hannibal told himself that he could forget all of this, and he is still certain that he could, but to what end, other than to prove a point? To make them both suffer an endless anguish of distance from the only other one who fascinates them so completely?

And so he had returned. Phoned Will the moment the plane had landed and waited impatiently for his arrival.

For this.

“Pants,” Hannibal instructs softly, an echo of their first time here together, before everything had changed.

Will gasps, pulls his hand free and takes a moment to relish in the stretch before obeying the given instruction, slipping from the bed to pull Hannibal’s pants off of him, to fold them and set them aside, to shuck his own before crawling back and kissing him deep, hips rocking in an endless rhythm against him now, desperate and hungry for the contact.

“Please?” he asks again, smiling, nuzzling, begging in the sweetest way possible for the debauchery he knows he’ll receive.

A blink, a moment of genuine surprise as the boy folds Hannibal’s pants before setting them aside. His own are kicked away in a heap, of course, but he looks back to Will with little less than adulation for the moment of care, unrequested and unexpected.

As Will is himself, in essence.

Hannibal breathes the boy’s name, and relents.

Quick hands catch Will by the waist to sling him down onto the bed. He laughs, arching, and the sweet sound has hardly lilted into the air before Hannibal is between his thighs. Tremendous speed, forcing a knee higher with a firm grip, lining up against him and pushing past his opening, stretched wide and willing, without hesitation. He buries himself in one long stroke, a harsh gasp when he feels Will tense around him with back bending and cheeks flushed scarlet.

“Fuck,” Hannibal growls.

Will laughs again, pleased, warm, and pulls Hannibal down to kiss to silence him, feeling the stretch, the need within the other man to move and push and deeper. He doesn’t strike him for the word.

He draws his nails sharp and harsh over Hannibal’s skin in a set of four red parallel lines from hip to shoulder across his back.

“Language,” he manages, before Hannibal steals his breath and Will is more than willing to give it up in favor of sweet moans and heavy pants of pleasure.

A grin at the chastisement, deepending beneath the pull of fingernails scraping against his back.

One week. One week and Will feels like his lungs don’t weigh a ton in his chest anymore. He draws his other knee high, to mirror the one Hannibal holds in a harsh grip that will bruise, and arches up off the bed, alternatively tugging the sheets above his head in a languid stretch and bringing them to Hannibal’s hair with absolutely no care for how much he messes the careful laying up.

For once, Hannibal had envisioned a gentler moment together. To see Will dressed in his suit, to take him to dinner and sustain the distance between them for a few hours more, before returning home to strip him down and savor every inch of pale skin he exposed.

Perhaps he still may, after this.

This, though, is altogether ungentle, a giddy fierce joining, rutting hard together - a fight against himself to keep his orgasm at bay and feel Will stretch beneath him. Fingers stretching catlike, head tilting back to pour out a decadent moan from the graceful curve of his pale throat, Hannibal is lost in the sound and feel of the boy beneath him. He reaches out above Will’s head to brace a hand against the headboard, a clattering rhythm driven against it.

Every bruising meeting of his hips against the boy’s thighs, every feral groan that rips past clenched teeth, and every finger that curls around Will’s cock to feel the weight of it heavy and flushed hot in his grip as affirmation, again and again, of how profoundly Will was missed.

“Not yet,” Hannibal gasps, seeing the telltale twitches of Will’s stomach beneath the long turn of Hannibal’s wrist. “Not until I tell you.”

“No.” It’s a whine, pulled from deep in Will’s chest that spreads his lips in a grin, closes his eyes and arches his back further. He’s shaking, his entire body taut with pleasure, with the anticipation of release. He bends and twists beneath Hannibal, small sounds escaping him with the feeling, with every change of angle and every thrust pushing him harder up the bed.

He relishes every moment of it.

And it gets harder and harder to, with the way Hannibal feels within him, around him, rough hands and hot lips, sharp teeth and pushing, pushing, pushing…

“Please,” he moans, a laugh catching the end of his moan. “Please, please please…”

Hannibal knows that laugh, moans against it, mouth warm against the corner of the boy’s lips as he begs. The same laugh when he climaxes, the same laugh when thinks of killing, the same laugh when he delighted as blood spilled hot across his belly where Will had spilled himself moments before.

“Yes,” Hannibal breathes, and without ceasing his rhythm, without releasing Will’s cock or the headboard, knuckles white with how hard he grips it, Hannibal’s release breaks through him, scattering across his nerves and forcing his breath to a held silence. Wet heat against his fingers and another laugh when Will follows in kind, whimpering sweet as Hannibal squeezes gently to pull every drop from him.

Release, relief, to feel his orgasm unspiral inside his boy again, dizzying as it loops free each time he pushes back inside of him.

Hannibal does not swear again, though he very well could, a sheen of sweat bright across his skin as he finally slows, still inside the boy, for as long as he can stand, leaning low to taste his breathless smile.

Will shivers, pleased, warm, contented and sated beneath him, returning every kiss with a soft sigh and a parting of lips.

Then he turns his head to the side, feeling Hannibal’s lips trace his cheek instead, up to his ear, nosing behind the lobe, at the sensitive skin there. He draws his fingers over the man’s arms over his shoulders, down to splay fingers with his.

“Take me to dinner,” he allows finally, turning just his eyes to look, his smile coy.

Hannibal rests the back of his hand against Will’s cheek, turns the boy to face him again. He does not lean immediately to kiss him, merely takes in the sight of him, cheeks lit ruddy scarlet and grin a little crooked and his lashes low across delta blue eyes.

“Beautiful, demanding boy.”

A kiss now, before Hannibal shifts to remove himself from Will, pleased by the little gasp he receives for it.

“You are in no state for dinner,” Hannibal informs him, nearly cheerful now, indulgent and relaxed. “Shower, and then your suit, perhaps, as you decide what you would prefer for the evening.”

Will’s grin is infectious, bright and happy and young. He stretches, just to feel Hannibal above him still when he does, and curls his legs languidly over Hannibal’s.

“Japanese,” he decides, sighing, bringing a hand up to rub his face with a pleased groan.

“I think Japanese would be perfect.”


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Eyes up,” Will murmurs, stepping closer, winding the tie around his hand until Hannibal’s chin is raised with it. “Slowly.”

Will has found that if he takes his sashimi between his teeth and not his lips, slipping it deftly from the chopsticks, he will inevitably have a drop of soy sauce left to lap up. A gentle curling of his bottom lip into his mouth after, a bare suggestion of a suck as the sticks seek out another piece and his eyes seek Hannibal’s to watch the response.

They had arrived early, had taken a table quite as they had their first dinner - out of the way and comfortable - though unlike their first dinner, no one gives Will a sidelong glance wondering why such a scruffy boy has been allowed inside, and how the man with him must have no shame in bringing him out in public.

Will sits, now, in his suit, his hair in a beautiful wave against his forehead, slicked with water and a little gel he had unearthed in Hannibal’s drawers that had amused him to no end. The blue in the grey of the suit does bring out the color of his eyes more, and the only glances he draws now are envious ones, hungry in some cases, and he delights in it.

His lip comes free, clean of sauce, and Will smiles.

Hannibal finds he has little interest in eating. He does select a piece of each roll that is brought to them, this particular restaurant a rare enough pleasure to not let the opportunity - or the bribe that allowed them to surpass the list - go to waste.

And yet, he is even more reluctant to miss a moment of the show being performed expertly across the table from him. The sushi that has earned glowing reviews in noted publications and tables reserved for weeks in advance is but an afterthought, as Hannibal takes in the pull of chopsticks against Will’s lower lip, tugging just enough to draw his attention to it.

Will’s eyes brighten, as ever, when he knows he’s being watched so closely.

“Are you enjoying yourself?” It is an innocuous enough question, but charged pleasurably as Hannibal follows the movement of Will’s thumb against his lips, a seemingly absent gesture that is entirely deliberate.

Hannibal could watch for hours.

Will’s smile is small but his eyes narrow in much deeper suggestion.

“You are,” he informs him, a strangely dominant statement that Hannibal can’t argue, and that Will doesn’t continue beyond setting another piece of sushi between his lips.

In truth, he is very much enjoying himself. The suit sits exquisitely against his skin, bespoke and soft and warm, and he feels beautiful in it. Shoulders straighter, motions controlled and deliberate, as though he was born into such money and hadn’t earned it. He still hasn’t, merely starting to understand the depths of what earning means with Hannibal Lecter.

He swallows the morsel in his mouth and sets the chopsticks down carefully, putting his elbows up on the table and threading his fingers together before resting his chin against them. Once more, the motion draws eyes, those taught from early childhood that elbows do not belong on the table, that one must always sit properly and never lean.

From Hannibal it draws a gentle bunching of his lips that suggests either mild displeasure or softened delight.

“I am very much enjoying dinner,” Will tells him honestly, smiling as he tilts his head, “I am very much enjoying the company, the attention. Though I must say, Doctor Lecter,” Will grins, “your conversation has been found wanting.”

Perhaps because there has been so little of it, between buying their way into the place and Will’s delightful distraction with the food.

“What’s to be done about that?”

Delight, then, rather than dismay as Hannibal's pursed lips curve slightly steeper and his own words carry on Will's voice.

"A most unfortunate thing," Hannibal murmurs, settling back in his seat to observe Will at length. "A side-effect of finding myself driven to distraction, I'm afraid."

He dabs the corners of his mouth with his napkin, folds it over several times before setting it beside his plate. They are both as clean as when they arrived, without a drip of soy sauce or errant grain of rice.

"Shall we speak of Paris, then?" A pause, bemused. "Greece, as you would have it?"

Hannibal takes measure of the room with a cant of his head, shoulders pressing forward as he inclines himself back towards Will. A lightless black suit with pale grey beneath, contrast and compliment both to the more subtle tones worn by the boy across from him. Each striking in his own right, and together nearly obscene with the radiance drawn from the other's proximity.

"Perhaps," Hannibal continues, as the distance lessens between them, "you would rather hear me tell of how much more distracting still was your absence, and how persistent was the thought of our last time together, with you gagged to stillness beneath me."

Whether it is a compliment, a regret, desire or dread in the memory, he does not clarify. All exist in his tone and none weighted more than the other, but the words are followed fondly by another shadow of a smile.

He glances towards Will's elbows again, wryly amused. "I do beg your forgiveness for my inattentiveness to the conversation. I am merely here to please, Mr. Graham, in whatever fashion you would desire it."

Will laughs, a low and pleased sound, and sits straight again as he deliberately folds his arms on the table, cocks his head.

"You have been otherwise attentive, perhaps I'll let it slide." He gestures vaguely with one hand, a motion that seems to at once forgive Hannibal his invisible mistakes, and to call a waiter over. Will inquires about dessert and sends the man away with his order before looking at Hannibal again.

"I take pleasure in knowing I was a distraction," he murmurs, leaning closer, feeling a few sets of eyes follow him. "That my mouth tormented you so with its absence."

He licks his lips deliberately, a brief and delicate gesture before drawing his lip between his teeth.

"I, too, am merely here to please, Dr. Lecter.” A narrowing of the eyes, amused. “And I know in what fashion you take your pleasure of me."

He shifts flawlessly to Latin.

"But I can only do so much with my mouth in such a public place."

Hannibal’s fingers splay against the table, a subtle movement, as he watches the boy with a curious tilt of his chin. Minute movements that add up to a perceptible pique of interest in how the boy is interpreting the unspoken rules, the shift of control, between them.

The Latin draws a particular crinkle to the corners of Hannibal’s eyes.

“Torments on torments,” he responds idly, French now since he understands but does not speak Latin, content to relinquish dead languages to the boy who brings life to them again.

The tip of his tongue appears, parting Hannibal’s lips thoughtfully as he speaks, the language elegant and warm, accents overlapping. “Given that my tastes are so transparent to you, and ill-suited for public consumption,” a pause, amused by his own play on words, “I would be curious to know in what fashions you find yourself inclined.”

A consideration never suggested between them before this moment, that Will may have his own proclivities and preferences as to such things. Even when Hannibal has laid tenderness against his skin rather than pain, it was entirely his choice as to what he lavished on the boy.

“How would you take your pleasure of me, Mr. Graham?”

Will’s pupils widen, just enough against the soft blue to notice before he blinks and turns his eyes away as their dessert arrives, the remains of their dinner carefully collected.

There has never been a clearly defined power position between them. Perhaps from the outsider’s eye, but they couldn’t see the power Will held in his delight in pain, in his persistence to take pleasure and offer more back. They couldn’t understand that the greatest power came from knowing that, effectively, he was immortal where Hannibal was concerned.

He considers the beautifully arrayed mochi, the green tea set beside in delicate little cups, hand-painted and well cared for.

Though invisibly he held so much power over Hannibal, he had never once been allowed to push far enough to genuinely take control of him.

Will licks his lips gently, selects a green mochi to start and murmurs his answer to the table before lifting his eyes.

“On your knees,” he says simply, taking a deliberate bite of the dessert between his fingers.

A thoughtful noise in response, attention fixed briefly on the curve of Will’s mouth wrapped around the delicate sweet.

“Then that is where we will begin.”

Hannibal does not share in the dessert, sated enough, it seems, by watching Will consume it. A lift of fingers to the waiter as he passes, to signal for the check.

It’s a curious sensation, even in such an open-ended suggestion. Echoes of Will pulling a belt tight around Hannibal’s neck, driving knees and fists and elbows into him in a struggle not only to survive, but to overcome. A thrill at the thought, unexpected, in finding himself at the boy’s mercy rather than the inverse.

Hannibal pays, and is unable to resist a slight smile as he feels attention linger on them both as they go.

They have only just returned when Hannibal experiences a frisson of tension. The boy keeps his boots on, several strides too far into the house, and the older man is unable to resist a sound of mild dismay as he hangs his coat.

Will turns, clicks his tongue, tilts his head and raises an eyebrow before carefully loosening his tie.

“Unwise,” he murmurs. “Starting such an evening with the first show of weakness, Hannibal. Must I teach you this as well?”

His smile is wicked, smooth and sits far too well on his youthful features. The flush in his cheeks, somehow, does not take away from the authority of his tone when he commands Hannibal follow him upstairs. He does, however, relent and remove his boots by the stairs before climbing them.

Once in the bedroom, Will steps close, slides his fingers over the tie Hannibal wears, and pulls it free from the vest and coat.

“Will you learn, I wonder?” he muses, tugging the tie gently, just once, to bring the man closer still, pulling a little harder to get him to bend so Will can kiss him.

Hannibal follows the tug, unresistant, meeting Will’s mouth with no more insistence than the boy gives him. A brush of tongues just soft together, drawing a breath through his nose before Will pulls apart.

“Teach me,” Hannibal responds, Will’s words from his mouth now.

No resistance yet, but an intrigue in how readily the boy settles into this role, a skill at which he’s proven himself adept, time and again, to become whatever is needed or desired. Infinitely malleable and yet inherently unchanged by his meticulous metamorphoses. Adaptable in a way that Hannibal wonders if he will, in fact, be able to echo without the monster snapping tight against its chains.

Hannibal lowers himself further still, hands skimming Will’s sides as he settles to the ground, kneeling at his feet.

“On my knees,” he echoes, dark eyes flashing bright as they turn upwards towards Will.

Will’s smile widens marginally and he keeps his hand on the tie, like a leash, before drawing his other through the soft, tidy hair, messing it to something softer, something less authoritative.

“So good for me,” he murmurs. None of the patronizing lilt, nothing suggesting Hannibal is anything other than himself, here. Gently, Will tugs against his hair to tilt Hannibal’s head back before he lets him go, tie still in hand.

“Since you were so kind to put the suit on me, would you be so kind as to remove it?” he murmurs. “Just the pants, for now. My socks. Boxers. Then I want your hands behind your back. Your eyes up.”

Rather than the discomfort Hannibal anticipated that he would feel, he simply sighs, a strange relief in allowing himself to be guided now. An acknowledgment of the dynamic that has persistently grown between them, that even when Hannibal’s grip over the boy in words and actions is fierce, he still feels in thrall to him, responsive and reactive to whatever Will’s designs might be.

It makes the openness of the exchange refreshing, in a peculiar way, and Hannibal undoes the fly as instructed. Careful fingers slip the tailored trousers from his hips and lift them when Will steps out of of them. Folded, then, and gently set aside, bowing lower still to glide Will’s socks from his calves, off his feet, and then the boxers.

A breath, stolen, the spicy scent of arousal pooling from the boy’s skin as these too are slid down skinny thighs and past his feet.

Hannibal sets them neatly atop the socks, atop the folded suitpants, and wets his lips briefly with his tongue to taste the heady sensation of the boy so close to him.

He folds his hands behind his back, and lifts his chin to watch up the length of him, half-clad in the expensive suit, tie looped loose around his neck while his own is still held at a careful tension.

Will makes a sound in his throat, a needy soft thing and his lips part, pleased, seeing Hannibal so obedient to him so obviously where before he had fooled himself otherwise. When he couldn’t kill him, when Will would demand and Hannibal would acquiesce. All of it unspoken, now tunneled into this, like a vortex to a point, where it’s quietest as the storm of everything else rages around them.

In here it doesn’t matter.

“Eyes up,” Will murmurs, stepping closer, winding the tie around his hand until Hannibal’s chin is raised with it. “Slowly.”

Will relishes in the way he’s obeyed, without question, without anything more than a gentle blink of those beautiful dark eyes, the way they focus entirely on him. When he’s enveloped by the delicious heat, Will groans.

“God, I missed you for the week you were gone,” he sighs, eyes hooded and down to watch. “I missed sleeping against you, I missed making breakfast together, I missed -” he bites his lip as Hannibal takes him deeper, without instruction, very much welcomed.

The words move freely between them, lacking the discomforting weight that such confessions might otherwise carry in the careful movements of their usual vicious dance together. Hannibal would watch Will now even if not instructed to do so, humming his pleasure against the weight of Will’s cock sliding in smooth strokes past his lips.

There has been no one else with whom Hannibal had ever fully considered putting himself in this position. Not only on his knees, though that as well, but to yield to the boy so much more than only his body. His space, his territory and his quiet and his freedom, able but unwilling to live entirely in the same way as he had before this boy appeared, with blood between his teeth and lilting little songbird sounds like the ones that fill the air now.

“God when I have you under me… I’ll see your back arch. I’ll see your lips part in helpless pleasure for me - oh…”

Hannibal starts to reach for the boy’s thighs, wanting the heat of them beneath his hands, but hesitates halfway there and returns his hands behind his back. Hesitation, in the slow suck against Will’s cock, an uncertainty in the scant lift of Hannibal’s brows.

Will grins. Tilts his head and cards fingers through Hannibal’s hair before gripping it gently and pulling him off.

“It was your suggestion that the pleasure I take from you will start on your knees, I hadn’t intended to take it farther than that.”

He runs a thumb gently over Hannibal’s brow, watches him, as his eyes narrow in turn, as the hesitation and obvious displeasure at the implication is made plain as day through the sharpness of his eyes.

“Would you not do it?” Will asks gently, brow up. “On your knees as you are now, would you deny me?”

Will’s lips quirk. “So far, I have not forced a single thing on you this evening. You went to your knees yourself, before I asked. You followed me at your own volition, you put your hands behind your back as I asked and you have not looked away from me.”

He bites his lip, slips his hand to Hannibal’s face instead, stroking his cheek, thumb over his lips.

“Tell me.”

The taste of the proud boy, watching expectantly, still stings salty against Hannibal’s tongue, mouth falling a little slack to allow Will’s thumb to press against it, grazing his teeth.

“I can deny you nothing.”

The words snare sharp in his throat with their honesty, attention unwavering as the boy tilts his head in pleasure at the response.

“Should I try?” Hannibal asks, a riptide undercurrent moving fast beneath the smooth tone. “Shall I fight you as you fight me, swearing and snarling, to force your hand against me?”

Hannibal swallows hard, fingers tightening and stretching behind his back. The first rattling of chains, ever brittle, pulling tight around his ribs. The first strain against his seams, pulling together and apart again, as he draws in a long breath.

He could deny him, in fact. Unravel the submission he’s yielded, convince himself it isn’t some facet of a greater dynamic rapidly carving itself between them, moment by moment, day by day.

But he will not. Hannibal reminds himself that this, too, is a choice.

“The evening is what you will make of it.” A pause, a quick curl of lips. “Mr. Graham.”

Will smiles, expression, for a moment, entirely genuine, entirely open.

"I want to enjoy it,” he says, the words stroke deeper over skin than a declaration of claim, than a domination; they suggest that the enjoyment would be mutual, had to be, in order for Will's wish to be fulfilled.

"Though I must admit, I do love seeing you on a leash." Will’s smirk returns, and he leans close to kiss Hannibal again, tie pulling taut so he can feel it against his skin, free hand holding Hannibal’s chin in place.

"In that you may need to indulge me."

A resistance, at first pull, that eases beneath the kiss even as the tension tugs against his throat. Surprised that the boy would stay his hand when offered to use it freely without retribution, in knowing that Hannibal would not likely do the same for him.

Stalemate, each held in place by the other.

Hannibal relaxes his hands now, lifts them to slide warm up the back of Will’s thighs and draw him near again. The boy’s cock, soft skin pulled taut and flushed, brushes Hannibal’s cheek as Will wraps the tie around his fist just a little tighter.

The older man draws a quiet breath, eyes turning upward as he kisses the boy’s hip, the dark curls of hair, the base of his length to pull his lips across the side of it, tongue tracing a line gentle enough to feel it twitch in response.

“Tell me, then,” Hannibal responds, gentling from the cresting swells of apprehension as he nuzzles adoring against the boy’s soft belly. “And you will have it.”

Will arches his neck, a genuine languid beautiful stretch, and bites his lip, settling one hand in Hannibal’s hair again. 

"Undress me," he sighs. “Undress yourself,"

He parts his lips on a soundless moan of pleasure as Hannibal sucks against the head of his cock, sends shivers through Will’s entire form.

"Nnn - then on the bed, on your stomach - ah.” A laugh, warm and brief and Will’s cheeks flush darker. He tugs lightly at Hannibal’s hair.

"Stop." It's an amused admonishment, gentle. "I know your mouth, let me learn the rest."

Hannibal smiles, hidden against the boy’s hip, at the sound of his laugh, pressing another kiss against the smooth curve of bone before he stands. No scolding for this, none of the ecstatic punishment that Hannibal knows he would lay into Will’s skin for such disobedience.

A gentler control, to allow it to be as much of a choice as it is an order followed.

He ducks his head, nuzzling against Will’s temple, and presses another kiss, reverent fingers at work to loose the buttons of his jacket, the waistcoat beneath it that fits perfectly snug against the lean lines of his body. Both are slid free with careful fingers and held over Hannibal’s arm as he lingers over each button of the boy’s shirt.

Each worth taking time on, each followed by a fingertip that trails down his sternum, his stomach, until the shirt too is slid free.

Hannibal makes himself resist the urge to grab the boy by his skinny body, pull him smotheringly close again and lift him from the floor. Pin him to the wall, perhaps, and hear him beg and whimper, or lay back beneath him and count his ribs beneath his skin as he arches writhing.

He allows for the thoughts to provide such pleasant torment, as the clothes are hung, the suit reassembled with care, and his own removed with equal precision. He hands his tie back to Will, still knotted, with a scarcely restrained smile as he passes by him to the bed to lay face down on it.

A swallow, hard, to fight down the sudden sensation of exposure, turning his cheek against the cool pillow to watch Will.

For a moment Will just marvels at the fact that he’s allowed, that Hannibal is letting him have this, isn’t backing out from a game they have thus far never played, hesitant, as any wild predator, to be forced to something unknown in case it traps them.

When he follows, it’s to crawl over Hannibal’s prone form and press a hot open-mouthed kiss at the very top of his spine.

Hannibal’s body is scarred. Things Will has noticed before and will never ask about, and he takes his time, veering from each vertebra, to give each their due attention, until beneath him the man trembles with a strange anticipation, a pressure he can’t seen to ease, tension he won’t explain to Will, and Will allows that, just kisses until he reaches his tailbone, nuzzles against the warm skin there.

His hands skim parallel, down Hannibal’s sides, gentle over his ribs, harsher - marginally - against his hips just to hold him still. Will is bent, back arched in a pleasing curve, inverse to how Hannibal enjoys seeing him, perhaps because they are inverse here, too, as Will chooses which pleasures to lavish on the man beneath him.

He skims the backs of his fingers over the insides of Hannibal’s thighs and smiles when they spread, just a little, with the sensation.

The warm breath against Hannibal’s skin does not provide a noise yet but certainly provides a response. Will watches the twitch of muscle in Hannibal’s thigh, fingers grasping just a little harder against the sheets, a furrow in Hannibal’s brow that does not allow itself to be smoothed even as he brings his breath and heart rate to steady.

It occurs to Will, in that moment, that perhaps Hannibal has not allowed this before. Indulged in all nature of depravity when afflicting himself on others, but not the recipient of such things. Not like this.

Hannibal sighs to feel the boy’s hand against him, pressed cool over the base of his spine, fingers spreading as Will ducks his head again, the other hand widening Hannibal’s thighs just a little further to allow him room to draw his tongue against him.

Will knows, with the choked, soft sound that breaks from Hannibal not of his own allowance, that his suspicions were correct.

He grins, where Hannibal can’t see him, and feels this victory swell in his chest, warm him, hitch his own breath before he leans in again, almost lovingly lapping against the sensitive thin skin there, drawing the pleasure out for him, where Will very rarely does this for others unless under duress, though he himself comes apart at the seams when it’s done to him.

It appears Hannibal has a similar response.

Will’s hands curl against his thighs to hitch them just a little higher, to spread just a little more and press his tongue against him harder, finally penetrating the ring of muscles and feeling Hannibal tense beneath him with it, a shiver stroking his spine.

Will hums, relishes in another.

He ducks his head, after a moment, to bite a brief sharp reminder against the sensitive inside of Hannibal’s thigh, nuzzling after.

“Arch for me,” he murmurs.

A muddle of emotion in response to the command, all stilled with the slide of Hannibal’s hands against the sheets. He pushes himself little higher, to lengthen his body and bring his shoulders lower, a leonine curl in the arc of his spine, knees shifting beneath his weight to present himself, at Will’s request.

For no one else before this, for no one else foreseeably after. A raw exposure that scrapes against Hannibal’s nerves, the shrill pitch of which reminds him that, to his surprise, something in him yet remains human.

And were that not enough, the painfully hard erection he is resistent to pull away from the friction of the sheets would serve as ample enough indication of this newfound weakness.

So he bends, curving in a stiffer, stronger iteration of the arche he regularly pulls down the length of Will’s spine, forearms flexing tense as Will leans in again, and this time brings a finger beside his tongue, to trace the circle of sensitive skin and rend a gasp from Hannibal.

Will doesn’t rush, deliberately taking his time to bring Hannibal to the shuddering, the breathless pleasure that Will is so used to enduring when the other chooses to inflict time and patience on him.

He’s pressed the tips of two fingers in before he pulls back, rests his forehead against the small of Hannibal’s back where it’s slick with cool sweat and plagued with erratic shudders.

“Mmm, look at you,” he breathes, smiling, fingers not pushing deeper but gently pulsing in shallow thrusts where they sit, stretching. “Not desperate yet, not allowing yourself to be.”

He’s just as breathless, just as hard and aching for it as Hannibal beneath him, and Will slides further up his body, rests his forehead between his shoulders, rolls his hips where Hannibal can feel it. It’s the most thrilling experience knowing that someone so untamed is letting this happen, letting the most utter loss of control happen to him.

“You struggle beautifully.” In French, the words coarse and not refined like Hannibal’s are, and Will grins. “Let go for me. Tell me what you want.”

“In truth?” Hannibal responds in French as well, rough-voiced against the sheets from the effort of restraining himself beneath the boy’s probing touch. “I want nothing more than to pin you to this bed in my place and fuck you until you are unable to catch your breath. Or to turn your face to the wall and press you against it, forcing you to stand as your knees go weak while I’m inside you. I would drag you across the carpet and plant myself so deeply in you that you would feel me there for days after.”

A shift of muscles, shoulders working against the position he’s in, a visible strength to him, coiled tight but held at bay despite the tension. The rush of French, filthy, seems to ease the pressure a little, but still Will’s fingers twist deeper inside him and Hannibal’s lip curls in a snarl that eases away, clouds parting, when Will bends his fingers just so.

Hannibal arches deeply now, roiling power curling through his spine, groaning low, primal, as pleasure flares hot behind his eyes, and earns Will a muttered curse in French.

Letting go, inch by inch, to unlace the seams rather than let them tear apart.

“I would know how it feels,” Hannibal finally breathes, “once.”

Will almost purrs against him, stretching himself to match the arch, to bend utterly against Hannibal like a second skin. He nuzzles him, turns his head to part his lips against his skin, to breathe in the musk of him, the pleasure, the tension…

Without warning, Will’s free hand strikes hard against Hannibal’s thigh, squeezing the stung skin a moment before he leans back to kiss it gently.

“Language.” Will laughs softly. “I speak French as well.”

A deep pleasure, this, to be able to punish, to be able to take what he wants like this. He’s leaking now from Hannibal’s words, body aching for everything he’s said, begging for it and pushing at his mind to let it happen and yet…

“Spread wider,” Will murmurs, kissing the base of his ribs gently. “Stay still.”

He moves only far enough for the lube, to spread it on his fingers and start to prepare Hannibal properly, a slow and deliberate thing, dedicated, almost gentle if it wasn’t for the sharp pangs of pleasure from the curled fingers, the stretch when Will adds a third.

There is no repercussion yet for the slap, beyond a lingering sound drawn deep from Hannibal’s chest, some dire note of warning rumbling in the distance that fades to a warmer tone when Will shifts over him. The cool press of his skin against Hannibal’s back, a familiar weight heavy and gentle, all easing slow against him as does the movement of slick fingers.

A drawn breath through clenched teeth as Hannibal is stretched wider still, a shift of hips to relieve the pressure building in the small of his back that does nothing to alleviate it.

Hannibal glances past his shoulder, to see Will watching him, working him open. He wonders at the boy, exceptional in his ability to take hurt and to revel in it, shape it into beautiful moans through bloodied lips and still find strength in his body to draw so fiercely close to Hannibal once their hungers have been sated.

Will’s fingers span open and Hannibal groans, ducking his head towards the bed again.

This is a fresh pain, entirely unfamiliar, worth tasting for the newness of the experience alone. An intense push and pull of muscle as much in his own control as Will’s and yet an effort to sustain.

Hannibal cannot help but imagine how it must feel for Will, even with all his experience and skill at such things, when with little more than spit between them, Hannibal fucks him so hard he bleeds.

He also cannot help but remember how last time it happened, Will still laughed, aching, as he burst white heat across Hannibal’s fingers moments later.

“Remarkable boy,” comes the sudden praise, breathless French and another swear pressed through clenched teeth as Will withdraws his fingers.

“Your remarkable boy,” Will replies, words just as breathless, just as soft and almost rushed in their need to be said. He strokes himself quickly, enough lube to slick himself and considers.

As he is, the push will be easier for Hannibal, would be more comfortable for the stretch, easier to bend into and away from, to control anything he wants to control that Will lets him. And yet Will knows that he has to see his face, that he will never again be able to witness Hannibal so vulnerable, so open to this as he will be now.

Will kisses the base of his back, up higher, over his spine and tugs at his earlobe when he reaches it.

“Turn over, turn over for me,”

It’s obeyed, the same brief hesitation and reluctance with which Hannibal had bent before, but he still does, Will is still allowed this, and when he can, again, Will kisses him, deep and languid, opens his lips to Hannibal to give him control over this, at least, over the speed and pressure, allows him to grip his hair and tug him close as Will’s hands gently spread his thighs and he rests between them.

“Just once,” Will whispers, sighing out harsh as he lines up, throat clicking as he swallows. “Just once and I will make you remember this with longing.”

Even as the kiss deepens, mouths spreading wide against each other, tongues driving and curling together, Hannibal focuses, concentrates on relaxing the rest of himself. Not a nerve or muscle outside of his control, not a vessel in his body whose expansion and contraction is conducted without his explicit permission to act.

Not enough, still, to prevent the pull of new pain from pushing a soft gasp from him, when Will rocks slowly inside. Just breaches and holds, losing a quiet noise himself in the moment he feels Hannibal tight around the head of his cock.

Their eyes meet - a breath - hooded blue watching lightless dark, both rapt with awareness of the other in this new form, mouths unfurled for breath that jerks short from each of them.

For all of his languages, Hannibal finds himself without a word to describe the moment.

"Slow," Hannibal finally sighs, when just as suddenly as the stillness was held, it breaks on a groan as Hannibal arches slow beneath the boy - discomfort, pleasure, pain, delight in the novelty of such a sensation shared with this boy, his, his Will, his alone.

Will spreads his fingers, presses firm but not cruel against the twitching muscles of Hannibal's thighs to keep them parted.

"Spread," Will grins. "There, like that."

He leans low, to feel the thin sheen of sweat between them, to feel Hannibal seek his mouth again with a need superseding physical, more than what their bodies take and offer - closeness, affection, tenderness called for in curl of Hannibal's fingers through Will's hair.

A breath sucked sharp through his teeth as Will moves inside him, sighed roughly against the boy’s ear in the form of his name.

“Will,” Hannibal murmurs, shifting his legs higher against Will’s hips. “My Will.”

A strange, soft little mewling sound of pleasure and Will smiles against Hannibal’s cheek, brings his lips together in a gentle kiss there.

"Yours," he agrees, the word groaned. 

It's not unheard of, but rare enough to matter, that Will’s clients ask him to fuck them, instead. The pressure, now, the heat, the trembling and twitch of every muscle when Will moves against Hannibal in slow rolls of his hips sends his own back rigid with the electric sensation.

He knows it must hurt, can feel that Hannibal is enduring, still, not enjoying, and he adjusts himself accordingly, tilting his hips, slowing his thrusts, discovering the body beneath him as only recently Hannibal has started to with him.

It's one moment, just one, of utter blinding pleasure for Will when around him Hannibal clenches, arches his back, draws nails down his sides, and he knows he’s found what he needs.

"Stay still." It's a moan, far from authoritative, too weak, even, to be a suggestion, and Will bites his lip before turning his head and kissing Hannibal hard, cock working in shallow, gentle thrusts against him until he pulls a sound from Hannibal too. He swallows it, savors it, feeds Hannibal his own name in soft little pants before pushing himself to be just over him, to watch.

Let go for me.

An arc, body shifting in a roll of muscles, tendons, ligaments each in turn to loosen himself, to yield beneath the pressure of the boy's movements inside of him. The set of his jaw slackens just enough for Hannibal's lips to part on a fervent groan, relinquished to the boy atop him, inside him, deepening his thrusts and angling them to send another cascade of static sparks down Hannibal's skin and draw a shudder from him.

White flaring behind his eyes that flutter closed, allowing the unexpected pleasure to burst inside of him each time Will moves against that particular spot that he has sought in the boy so many times before.

He does not stay still, entirely, legs wrapping warm against Will's sides, hips rising, angling, twisting in response to the movement. Hungry to take all the moment has to offer him this once, to feel the skill of the boy who presses bony hips into his thighs, the practiced movements of a body that understands how to take pain and give it, how to receive pleasure and to offer it in turn.

Awareness of his entire self far beyond what a boy of seventeen should have, that Hannibal thinks with a bare smile will almost certainly supersede his own such skills in time.

"More," Hannibal purrs low, dark eyes shadowed beneath strands of hair. Enjoyment in endurance, in taking this particular hurt and reveling in it, a distant echo of what Will experiences so often.

He does not reach for his own cock, leaking and hard against his stomach, refuses to give himself that distraction and tightens his legs instead to bring Will down harder into him.

They lose any particular rhythm fairly quickly after that. Both unused to the positions they hold, the pleasures they yield. 

Will presses kisses against Hannibal's neck, gentle bites that won't bruise, pulling out almost all the way, now, before pushing harder in. It's an exquisite sort of endurance, and Will can feel himself closer and closer to the familiar fall, the rush of blood and air and heat.

"Fuck." It's weak, utterly helpless, and he brings a hand between them to stroke Hannibal as Will loses himself to his climax, for once uncaring if he's permitted to take it, grinning wolfishly at the thought of Hannibal being marked that way - with heat and slick and desire within him.

The boy’s pleasure rushes against Hannibal’s skin in gasps and grasping hands, inside of him now, too, he feels the sudden warmth spilling deep, sliding against the join of his thigh when Will moves again in a slow roll of hips. A breathless fixation on the feeling, eyes nearly closed but forced open enough to watch the boy consume his pleasure with a hard swallow of air, heart racing.

The wet drip of heat cools against Hannibal’s skin in a trail and a tightened grasp, twisting from Will’s wrist, pulls Hannibal’s orgasm from him with a harsh hiss against the boy’s shoulder, streaking warm over Will’s fingers, spreading across flushed skin beneath the movement of their bodies pressed together.

“Language,” Hannibal finally breathes, a latent shudder rolling down the length of his spine, but no strike follows the scolding. He jerks, unexpected, at the feeling of Will withdrawing from him, and sighs out a deeply held breath all at once against Will’s chest.

Powerful arms surround the boy to pull him close and turn them both to their sides. Lazy kisses, sloppy and affectionate, shared as they catch their breaths and Hannibal seeks to feel Will curl against him again. A more familiar weight and shape to the joining of their bodies in this embrace, in the possessive way that Hannibal buries his nose in Will’s hair.

“You were gentle,” he finally remarks, a note of surprise in it.

"Paying forward a kindness shown me," Will replies, softly, contented. He feels loose, but not enough, not like he usually does after his body relents to allow him relief. Here he feels more awake, more powerful, nuzzling so close to Hannibal again, breathing him in, smiling at the mess against the man’s stomach he knows will drive the other to the shower very soon.

"Just once?" he asks, eyes narrowing in amusement. He knows his answer.

Just as he knows that he could have made this extremely painful for Hannibal, could have taken his fill of retaliation and cruelty, aimed at the body that had made him suffer with it, and knows that choosing not to had been easier.

This isn't where he belongs, in control. Not physically. 

He kisses the center of Hannibal’s throat in a languid possessive way.

Hannibal hums softly, eyes closing with the feel of Will against him, lips pressing to lay gentle claim to him, echoed in the spread of Hannibal’s hands rubbing slow across Will’s back. He does not move to shower, to wash the moment off his skin, to contemplate alone the way the boy has changed him now, physically, as a coda to the openness that has begun to expand far deeper than that.

“I missed you,” Hannibal whispers into Will’s hair again, content, it seems, to linger satisfied instead, and feel the shared warmth between them.


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will ducks his head, panting quietly. It’s already been half an hour like this, endless calm questions, endless delicious torment. He doesn’t know if he’ll be able to sit his exam simply because he isn’t sure he’ll be able to sit.
> 
> He can see the school building over Hannibal’s shoulder, can see the people meandering around it with their own textbooks, practicing, testing each other.
> 
> Not like this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> with love to [Roo](http://color-division.tumblr.com) who really, really wanted more sex in the Bentley
> 
> and with apologies to researchers of evolutionary exclusion theory who I'm sure never imagined their work would be used in such a way

Will shivers, a thing that takes his entire body into a state of pleasurable near-paralysis as he tries to find a balance, an equilibrium again. He licks his lips before they part again, slack and red from where he’d bitten them just moments before. He makes a sound, a gentle little thing, like a whine, or a sigh he’s finally given voice to as well as breath.

“It’s…” another, a little more lilted towards desperate now, “considered bad form to cram the night before an exam -”

His fingers scrabble for purchase on the seat, find none and ease to softness with the hummed displeasure of the man under him - ‘nails, Will’ - and he swallows.

“Worse still the hour… hour before…”

Hannibal purrs soft against Will’s shoulder, hands braced against his hips to slow his movements. Achingly slow as Hannibal rolls his own upwards, kissing the bare skin that presents itself when Will’s head lolls back with a groan.

“It can only benefit you to review the material so close to when you will need it,” Hannibal responds, conversational. “‘Cramming’ is the term, if I’m not mistaken.”

He lifts the boy despite his squirming, spreads him with firm hands to hold him perched, unmoving.

“Stigmatizing conditions that would lead to an exclusion response, Will. Name three.”

Will ducks his head, panting quietly. It’s already been half an hour like this, endless calm questions, endless delicious torment. He doesn’t know if he’ll be able to sit his exam simply because he isn’t sure he’ll be able to sit.

He can see the school building over Hannibal’s shoulder, can see the people meandering around it with their own textbooks, practicing, testing each other.

Not like this.

He moans.

“Physical stigmas,” he manages. “Racial… ethnic… stigmas.” Another shiver, his fingers flex against the seat again. “Aesthetics - Hannibal, please.”

“The leather, Will,” Hannibal warns him, settling when the boy’s hand braces against the back of Hannibal’s neck instead.

The Bentley is warm, humming soft around them with the heat running to keep away the chill outside. Hannibal shifts against the soft seat beneath him, eyes lifting from where Will’s cock bobs unattended as he pushes up inside his boy again, resuming a slow-building rhythm.

His brilliant, capable boy.

“Very good,” Hannibal finally responds, ignoring the plea for release from his hands, the extended fucking, the car - what exactly Will is begging for matters little, and is not granted.

Will presses his palm against the fogged window and lets his head tip forward, groaning and rolling his hips to match Hannibal’s movements, long strokes, burying deep inside him to hear the sweet sound that whimpers forth.

“The four primary adaptations for sociality.”

Another groan, and Will smiles, knowing it won’t be accepted as an answer.

“Altruism,” he sighs, thighs spreading wider as Hannibal’s hand slips between them to stroke the skin. “Kin-directed, reciprocal.”

A shiver. Will’s fingers curl hard over the window, make a sound as the skin squeaks over the wet glass. He wonders if anyone can see in to figure out what’s happening. He had worried, immediately, when this had started. Hannibal hadn’t cared.

“In-group cooperation,” he gasps, biting his lip against another moan as Hannibal holds him still for a few shallow, slow rubs that send Will’s brain sparking in pleasure, his cock twitching in need. “For between group conflict.”

He moans, wriggles, finds himself pinned again. Directs his hands behind himself to rest against the wheel, careful to fold his fingers over the wheel itself and avoid the horn. Will groans, smile growing, when Hannibal strokes a warm palm from his throat to his navel, enjoying him this way.

“Hunting,” he adds.

The word pulls a shiver up Hannibal’s spine, chin lifting as the sensation rivets up each vertebrae. Eyes hooding, irredeemably pleased to hear his own words spoken to him in such a delightfully decadent context. His ego swells, pushes his pulse faster, and he release Will’s hip to run both hands up the boy’s back to feel him curve, pulling him towards his mouth.

Heated kisses, tongue pressed to the boy’s hairless chest to feel his heart beat hard against his ribs.

“Tell me about hunting, Will,” Hannibal murmurs low. “Consumption smoothing.”

A faster rhythm, pace quickening to reward and distract Will all at once, driving him back against the steering wheel that presses into his spine.

The sound Will makes is a guttural thing, low and pleased and drawing through every sinew that pulls taut with it.

“Sharing,” he gasps, bending back entirely, hand up on the dashboard - the glass he knows is not tinted - for balance as he rides this out, feels it fill him and consume him until he’s reciting simply to see Hannibal relish in his own words fed back to him.

“Sharing a kill with another hunter… stored social obligation…”

Another twist of his body, and Will brings his hand down to stroke himself, so close already, for the moment uncaring if he gets chastised for this. He knows he’s flushed, sweat thin and cool against him through his open shirt that Hannibal had peeled back like skin to see him entirely.

“A favor once given, later returned…”

He starts to lick his lips, the tip of his tongue trembling at the top one when he gets distracted by another agonizing stroke over his prostate.

“Oh god please, more… let me…”

A low groan against Will’s chest when Hannibal presses his head beneath the boy’s chin, kissing up the length of his neck to feel the way the words form in his throat.

Hannibal’s work has never sounded more beautiful.

The pleas go unanswered, but Hannibal does not stop Will from touching himself, content in knowing he’s only making it worse for himself in doing so and not being permitted to finish yet. His eyes drift the length of Will’s twitching, writhing body to where his hand curls eagerly around himself, tugging hard around the head as Hannibal shifts in short strokes inside of him.

“And that exchange,” Hannibal breathes, his own whisper growing rough now, “is an example of what, Will?”

His name, used more now than ever before, to see the color bloom across his cheeks when Will hears the accent curling comfortably around it.

Will whines, curling his hand tighter around himself to hold back, now, not come closer. There has never really been a rule, so much as a general understanding that without permission Will was not permitted to pleasure himself, to fuck another, to cum, in general.

He does suffer so beautifully for it.

“Hannibal -”

Another thrust, deep, and Hannibal holds Will still, attention on him until the boy opens his eyes, pupils wide and lips parted.

“An example, Will, you have three seconds.”

Will trembles, both from the tone, the delicious threat just fringing beneath, and from the feeling of being utterly impaled, splayed wanton in the car where anyone, by choice, could see them were they to lean just a little closer to the windows as they passed.

He licks his lips. Watches the pleasure quickly flick to annoyance in a moment and grins.

“Dyadic cooperation,” he purrs. “The seeking out of individuals who are good social exchange partners for you.”

Hannibal allows him to move, Will pushes himself up on his knees and moans loud when he sinks back down.

“Nnn - fuck - individuals who possess skills or attributes that are valuable to you.”

He relishes in the hot kiss pressed to the base of his throat, splays his hand against Hannibal’s stomach.

“Did I pass, sir?” he grins.

Fingers curling against Will’s back, Hannibal does not strike him for swearing, not so close to his class, but the look that he receives is enough to convey that it did not go unnoticed.

“Well enough,” Hannibal agrees, eyes drifting closed and head resting back against the seat as Will works himself on Hannibal’s cock. He does not guide him or stop him now, lets him fuck himself freely, caught in the narrow space of the driver’s seat. He pries Will’s fingers off himself, however, to fist his cock slowly instead.

“But it would be a profound disappointment were you to not perform as well on the exam itself,” warns Hannibal. A smile quirks the corner of his mouth when his hand tightens around the head of Will’s length and the boy whimpers against his cheek. “You share my bed, my home - you have me entirely at your disposal,” he adds, letting it bear heavy with meaning. “And you know this material more innately than had you merely read it. It is a treatise on our kind, Will, rare though we are.”

“The hunt did not end when humanity became gatherers, no matter how desperately they would like to think it did.”

His hand spreads across the back of the boy’s shirt to wrap in his hair and tug his head back, eyes hooded to watch the boy work himself faster, long strokes met by Hannibal’s firm stroking of his cock.

“And so our need for exclusion and sociality has evolved with us.” A pause, considering the weight of his own words. “Adapted now into a dyad. Partners in our particular social exchange.”

Hannibal brings the boy closer, tastes the panting breaths tinged with a voice that aches only for him.

“I expect nothing less than perfection,” he murmurs, and with a smile, allows.

“Now, Will.”

Will doesn’t need to be told twice, parting his lips wide in a loud, low moan, he presses against Hannibal everywhere he can touch him and cums hard enough to set white behind his eyes. It’s intensity that leaves him gasping, shivering, entirely fluid and unsteady.

He mumbles something, maybe a curse, maybe Hannibal’s name, it hardly matters, and then presses closer to ride out Hannibal’s orgasm with him, rocking back to take everything he gives him, feeling his hands hot against his skin.

“Perfection is so dull,” he murmurs, nuzzling against Hannibal with a smile before kissing behind his ear.

Hannibal lets the boy settle close, allows the little twitches and shivers of release to move through them both, and rubs the boy’s mess against his own pale skin to let it dry there. An arm wraps around Will’s waist, the other hand teasing through his hair, and Hannibal makes a small sound of amusement at the petulant declaration.

“Indulge me then, in this, since it comes so readily to you. It will be worth your while to please me so.” Turning against Will, Hannibal lets the curls of hair brush against his cheek, against his nose, breathes him in. “Or do not, and see what awaits you.”

While he could remain like this indefinitely, comfortable in nearness to his boy and surrounded by the warmth of the car, Hannibal opens his eyes enough to see the time and sighs. A warm kiss pressed to Will’s temple before he shrugs the boy from against his chest and buttons his shirt for him, tucks him back inside his pants in some effort to make him appear at least marginally less unruly.

He stretches, ignoring the impudent grin that curves Will’s lips, to pull the sweater from the floor, pulled offover his head as soon as this lesson began. A grimace at the threadbare, awful thing that hangs too long over the boy’s hands, stretched and soft, which Hannibal had arranged at least to be darned across the holes worn in it when he could take it away from Will long enough to bring it to his tailor.

Hannibal brings it back around Will’s shoulders, warm hands settling it when the boy obediently slides into it, and he grasps Will’s hands and brings his long, elegant fingers to his mouth.

“I would wish you luck, but you seem to have the luck of the Devil already and so I will not tempt it. Go, or you will be late and not even He will be able to save you from my hand.”

Will grins wide, leans in.

"Will you spank me, if I fail?" It's in jest, words quiet, almost as though it's a secret, an illicit thing between them, when between them that particular act is tame and gentle by compare.

He kisses Hannibal briefly, reaches into the back seat for his bag and climbs out of the car - deliberately from the driver's side - before leaning down to speak to Hannibal this way. Bent, back arched, his own cum drying tacky against his chest and stomach.

"If I do not have His luck I will cheat it,” he murmurs, quoting. "Remain an accepted part of society without paying the mutually agreed upon cost of exchange."

Another grin, a brief motion to adjust his bag over his shoulder, and Will pulls away, closes the door for Hannibal. He makes his way into the building, trying to appear casual in the knowledge that his thighs are slick with his misdemeanors from moments before.

Hannibal lingers a moment more, watching as Will goes with long strides and a cocky toss of his hair.

“Insolent boy,” Hannibal murmurs fondly, sorting out his own clothing with a sigh.

\---

The test is strenuous, but not more than expected. Will’s professor is an ardent fan of the work in question, which makes it simultaneously more detailed, but also easier to impress her by referencing oblique passages not specifically highlighted.

Will can’t help but gloat over the quality of the long-form answers, in particular, written nearly in Hannibal’s own voice as it works its way through him, still. Easy enough to mirror when he’s heard it so recently that Hannibal’s cum is still dry against his skin.

He’s one of the first to complete his test, and only prevented from being the first one complete due to the distraction caused each time he shifts in his seat, sending his nerves sparking over his skin. It’s handed in with a careless smile that lingers as he turns back towards his chair, a look that fades in an instant when he sees Hannibal seated comfortably at the back of the lecture hall.

Arranged to perfection, as though he hadn’t been impaling Will on his cock a mere half-hour earlier, Hannibal does not seem to notice the narrow attention levelled at him, waiting patiently with a curious, calm glance, taking in the lecture hall.

Will swallows, turns to sit in his seat again, this particular class not allowing the students to leave once their exams have been completed. It isn’t long to wait, though, another half hour before the papers must be collected and everyone dismissed.

Another half hour of Hannibal watching Will from his comfortable perch at the back of the room - Will is but four rows down from him.

Will settles, comfortable as he can be considering how entirely filthy as he is, and folds his arms together before resting them against the desk, his head on top. He can feel the cool air against his lower back where his shirt - inevitably untucked during the exam - has ridden up, pulling the sweater with it, and wonders if he can genuinely feel Hannibal’s gaze on him or if he’s just so used to it that he can emulate the feeling.

A moment more and Will stretches, a slow cat stretch over his desk, pushing himself off the seat just enough to be suggestive, no sound but the promise of one just as clear before he settles. He curls his arms again, pretends to look ahead at the clock at the front of the room while all his senses are tuned in to the man behind him.

There is an exchange, brief, between Hannibal and Will’s professor. Professional acquaintances, though no more than that, as her brows lift in pleased surprise to see him there, and he lifts a hand in response. Happy to stay quiet, it seems, until the students are done with their tests, and certainly not wanting to be a disruptive presence.

A glance towards Will, to observe the slight raise from his seat, arms stretched and fingers pressing, twisting, closing loose and languid.

Hannibal recalls the particular movement well, with expensive sheets beneath his grasping hands rather than the air. Seated behind him, there is no means or reason to return a gesture in kind, too overt a move in the sensitivities of this particular game to try.

To all effect, then, Hannibal appears not only not to notice the maneuver, but to not notice Will in particular at all. A distant look, aimed at no one, when Hannibal bothers to look up from a careful examination of his fingernails, skimming the room as a whole rather than pieces, and certainly not the particularly distracting piece that is Will Graham.

By the time class is called final papers returned to the front, Will is not quite draped over the desk. His entire body is alive under the eyes that deliberately pass him over, that avoid his own when he feigns a stretch, twisting in his seat as though to get a crick in his back and meeting dark eyes instead.

Or, not meeting them.

He remains as the students file out, watching as a few others do the same, as Hannibal finally moves from his seat, his coat draped over his arm in the most ludicrous, pretentious way, and makes his way to the front of the hall. Will wonders if the students even know who he is - he wonders if he would have, had the circumstances been different.

It’s unusual, incredible to see him in this space, commanding it just as surely as he does any room he enters. Will watches as Hannibal charms his lecturer, smiling in a way that reaches his eyes, showing genuine amusement and pleasure in the conversation.

Ego, Will thinks, bringing up one arm to rest his elbow on the table, his cheek against the back of his hand, pure ego. The knowledge that others are reading his work, appreciating it, appreciating him.

Will’s other hand comes up to his mouth where he absently works his teeth over the side of his thumbnail, eyes out of focus but aimed directly down to where Hannibal stands.

“You know who the guy is?”

Will blinks, turns in such a way as to make his elbow slide a little, his body stretch in a pleasing bend to look at the boy who had addressed him.

Zeller, he thinks. Brian, maybe. He’s not a bad looking kid, Will had caught his eyes on him before, had never followed through. He shrugs, pretends boredom.

“Probably the asshole responsible for this exam,” he says. Zeller blinks.

“Shit, no way, you wanna go say hi to him?”

Will snorts. “Why? You think he’ll say it back?”

“Has it been so long?” Hannibal responds genially to the professor. “It certainly doesn’t feel like it.”

“It was a memorable conference,” she replies happily. “You know, it’s funny you should come by today. The test I just gave was actually about your thesis.”

“Was it? What a charming coincidence.” An easy smile, entirely amused, entirely disingenuous, and somehow entirely convincing. No reason to lie about it, other than to prove he can get away with it, well aware of Will’s lingering presence among the other stragglers. “I’m sure you’ve taught it beautifully, outdated though it’s considered now.”

A pause, long enough to let the praise settle over him, the assurances of his own resolute cleverness, as he takes in the span of the classroom. He lets them come, accepts them only self-effacing in manner, and finally inquires.

“I was curious to follow-up on a particular student who I’ve been mentoring. I’m curious to know how he’s doing. I worry that perhaps my time with him is distracting him from paying adequate attention to his classwork.”

“The guy’s a genius though,” Zeller - that is his name, Will ascertains, after a brief exchange and an awkwardly twisted handshake as Will refuses to move from his position - continues. “He describes my entire high school life in a 22-page thesis.”

Will snorts.

“The language is so pretentious, though,” he returns, eyes back down to the front, a vague twist in his stomach when he sees Hannibal glance at him before continuing to speak, a very obvious implication of what the topic of conversation is.

“Deliberately obtuse half the time, some terms entirely archaic now. The thing’s older than I am.”

Zeller blinks.

“You’re kidding?”

Will shrugs, a languid, liquid movement, and grins. Then he directs his eyes down to the front again, narrowing briefly.

“I wonder if he’s as pretentious in person,” he says, knowing his voice carried just enough for Hannibal to hear, not enough to draw attention.

“I can’t believe he didn’t tell you we were studying your paper,” the professor laughs. “I’d assumed he was just quiet in here - new student, new semester. Shyer than I expected, maybe, if he didn’t even mention it.”

Hannibal allows another serene smile. “I don’t know, I’ve found him to be quite vocal in my experience. He’s doing well, then? Showing up on time, adequate marks?”

“There’ve been a few times where’s been out for a few days, but -”

“Ah,” Hannibal interjects. “That may have been when I needed him for a particular aspect of this study. Intensive work, particularly strenuous. My apologies, I will send along a note next time.” A hopeful tone, met graciously.

“That would be fine, Doctor, I’d rather him have the opportunity with you, truth be told.” She sifts through the paperwork, seemingly more than happy to discuss her student’s grades, much to Hannibal’s swelling pleasure. “Let me see if I can’t - ah, yes. He set the curve actually. You should be proud.”

Head tilting just perceptibly, a sparse motion. “May I ask by how much?”

“Only three points,” she responds, resisting a laugh. “I’m sure the other students won’t be nearly as pleased as you are by it.”

“Nah I can’t talk to him alone,” Zeller says, again, as Will just keeps watching, feeling himself flush a little as the tests are sifted, for, inevitably, his own. He swallows.

“I double dog dare you,” he deadpans. Zeller snorts, and Will finds himself genuinely smiling back when he glances up over where his hand has slid up to rest against his temples.

“Ask him to sign something,” Will continues. Zeller just laughs, pushes himself to stand and swings his bag up over his shoulder.

“Doubt he would. Still a fucken killer theory. He’s a cool dude, if only on paper.” He holds out his fist, a clear indication to bump it, and Will shakes his head and does, a strange sort of connection he thinks he’ll enjoy watching grow, if he sees Zeller in his class again in this capacity.

“I’ll get you one when I go for mine,” he promises, and the older boy leaves with a laugh. Will resumes his study of his mentor and his lecturer, swallowing and setting his jaw when she looks up and, with a smile, beckons him over. His eyes slide to Hannibal’s for a moment, heart thumping faster against his throat at the look he catches there, before he straightens up and takes up his bag to make his way down to them both.

A brow lifts so slightly as to go unnoticed by anyone but Will as he approaches, but Hannibal meets his attention with the same polite amicability as with his professor.

“Will Graham,” she chirps. “All these weeks and you never saw fit to mention that you were working under Doctor Lecter?”

Hannibal responds, as though on Will’s behalf, smile broadening. “I’m sure he didn’t wish for you to think he had an unfair advantage, though I assure you, our lessons together have been especially rigorous. He is quite capable, despite his age.”

Will ducks his head, the shy student, the quiet hard working boy, a small smile at the corners of his lips. He brings up a hand to tug at the hair at the base of his neck before straightening up and smiling a little more.

“Dr. Lecter doesn’t take on students often. I didn’t want to push my luck in making our arrangement public,” he says carefully, turning nervous eyes to Hannibal before returning them to the lecturer, who looks absolutely charmed - as always - by his shy little act.

Hannibal’s eyes narrow gently and he adjusts his hands under the coat that’s folded over them. Will wonders if this is a deliberate insinuation into the one part of his life he has kept free from Hannibal, for the dinner party that Will had so similarly invaded.

“I - uh,” Will clears his throat, ducks his head again, taps the toe of his boot against the carpeted floor as he fidgets with the sleeve of his sweater. “I should get going. I have to finish the essay for forensics and Dr. Lecter starts his lessons early on Thursdays since I don’t have class -”

Attention dropping briefly to the twist of Will’s fingers against the worn knit of the sweater, Hannibal nonetheless allows a slightly deeper sigh. Fascinated by the malleability of the boy across from him, his ability to become whomever he needs to be, context to context, moment to moment. Observing his little sidelong glances, the pale rose of embarrassment across his cheek, it’s hard to imagine that less than an hour before, the boy was sprawled across the steering wheel of his Bentley fucking himself to climax on Hannibal’s cock.

Hannibal clears his throat as well. Perhaps not so hard to imagine after all.

“Congratulations on your score,” Hannibal offers Will, expression inscrutable beyond a wall of amicable politeness. “Nearly perfect.”

“Close enough,” laughs his professor.

Agreeably, Hannibal’s smile widens. “Close enough. But tomorrow is going to be a very long day,” he concurs. “I’ll walk you out, Will.”

His name, the undercurrent of singeing warmth beneath it, embers of the heat that carried it during their unscheduled cram session.

Polite goodbyes, grasping the handshake with both of his own as he leaves his contact information - business number, business email - with Will’s professor and thanks her for her time, emphasizing how grateful he is to know that Will is doing so well, and ensuring her that Will is performing marvelously in his keeping as well.

The cool smile lingers as they leave.

Few students meander on campus now, this being the last exam of the day, and Will follows Hannibal’s cues on whether or not to follow him or act as though their relationship really is just a professional mentorship. The older man seems content to lead Will to his car and part ways there, false smile still in place, appearing, to any that look their way, like a normal discussion between two normal people.

Will steps aside as the car pulls away, raises his hand in an awkward wave to see the man off. When Hannibal turns the Bentley around the corner, Will rolls his eyes and hoists his bag higher up on his shoulder. Then he starts to walk home.

He is perhaps three blocks from his apartment when the car pulls up again, window down, familiar smoke coiling from inside. Will snorts, walks over to lean through the window.

“I was taught not to speak with strangers, mister,” he murmurs, eyes wide, lips parted in false innocence. Hannibal clicks his tongue and tilts his head in less than subtle suggestion, and Will grins before letting himself into the car. Once the door is closed, it peels from the curb and heads past Will’s apartment back to Hannibal’s home.

For a few moments, they sit in silence. Will watches Hannibal finish the cigarette, chews the corner of his sleeve and waits. Then he follows the path the butt makes out the window before that is wound up with a quiet hum.

“Close enough?” Will repeats, regarding his score, sending a small smile to Hannibal, brows up and expression appropriately pleading.

Hannibal does not turn to face him, but merely lets the hopeful little smile settle warm against his skin. An act, as much as the shy and nervous glances had been in the classroom, but no less charming.

He does not seem angry, but rather proud, in fact. It swells through his chest, pressing against his ribs, that this boy - his brilliant and clever boy - was the best amongst all, excelling on a test that the professor had predicted few enough to even pass. Hannibal takes no personal credit for it, in the torrid study he had provided him, knowing it is entirely Will who so effortlessly surpasses expectations.

Still...

"Good enough, Will, is anything but," Hannibal responds, purring pleased. “A single missed question. A fingerprint left behind at a scene that merits more investigation. A hair, a spot of your own blood. Good enough will not save you.”

The car stops at a light. Reaching, Hannibal grasps Will's hair, tangling the windswept curls in smoke-singed fingers.

"I asked you for a simple thing," he continues softly, thumb grazing his boy's temple. "Perfection on this, dull though you declared it. I was assured you would provide it, trusting in your confidence."

Grateful for the opportunity presented for punishment, grateful for Will’s persistent stubbornness, a faint smile shows in the corners of Hannibal’s eyes before his touch sinks tighter, tugging Will’s curls just to the uncomfortable side of painful.

Will moves with the touch, with a little plea whined for Hannibal’s delight, and bridges the divide between their seats to lessen the harshness of the grip, to press his mouth open and warm just beneath Hannibal’s ear.

“One question,” Hannibal murmurs, tilting against Will’s lips, shrugging into the affection. “But worth three points.” Fingernails drag down the boy’s neck to press sharp against the soft skin in the graceful curve presented to him. “Did you miss it intentionally, Will?”

Will’s lips don’t still against the skin, he doesn’t pull away, he says nothing.

The light turns green and Hannibal reluctantly loosens his grip on Will to hold the car steady through the intersection.

Will considers, licks his lips and pulls back, enough to duck his head under Hannibal’s arm, to nuzzle against his thigh with a smile and warm air pressed to the expensive fabric of his suit. Will grins, knows that Hannibal has not had time to clean himself up beyond what the brief few moments in the car had offered, from their ‘study’ before, and parts his lips against his thigh with a moan.

One question.

One question from the perfect score, one question from 100% and the praise of his teachers and his mentor and yet… one question that would have suggested no more improvement was needed, that suggested Will was no longer worth the time Hannibal gave him, because he could do it on his own.

Perfection was boring.

Hannibal spares a glance down at the boy mouthing against his thigh and hums a note of consideration. The same sound that accompanies a selection of wine to pair with dinner, or weighing the necessity of adding another pinch of salt to a dish.

He does not encourage him, neither does he push him away.

"Your mouth will not save you this time," Hannibal finally informs Will, a glint of amusement as he says it.

Still, he can't resist a shift of hips to slide a little further back into his seat. Fingers drop from the steering wheel to draw another cigarette from his coat pocket, the lighter with it, a long drag and a crackle of embers exhaled slow and pulled through through the cracked window. It remains between his fingers of the hand on the steering wheel, as the other drifts lower to curl again in Will’s hair, twisting the dark strands between his fingers.

Shameless, Hannibal chides him, “I must provide you notes, now, for your extended absences, as though I were your keeper.”

Nothing is said about those absences being caused by a need for his bruises to heal, his cuts and scrapes to stitch themselves back together, but the knowledge of it provides a swell of perverse joy that gathers in the corners of Hannibal’s eyes.

Will moans softly, drawing his tongue over the material now, feline, needy, knowing that even if his mouth won’t save him a sound thrashing of Hannibal’s chosen weapon later, he can distract him from his question now.

The smell of smoke insinuates itself against his nose, into his lungs, and he arches, shifts to set his knees to the seat - not his shoes - and pushes closer to where Hannibal wants his mouth to be. The mention of notes, Will meets with utter amusement, the idea of Hannibal writing and signing permission slips for him makes Will want to laugh - he’d learned to forge his dad’s signature long ago for trips he never even went on.

He brings one hand up to undo the button on Hannibal’s slacks, waits for the man to start a turn before leaning in to tug the zipper with his teeth, grinning when the car brakes suddenly before continuing.

“I keep myself,” Will teases, tonguing against the fabric of Hannibal’s boxers now.

A rumble, curious and disapproving all at once, from above, and a responsive twitch beneath Will’s clever tongue below. Hannibal slows the car a little to account for the distraction, and to let it linger that much longer.

“You certainly do.” Deeply entertained now, by the prideful proclamation from the boy bowed across his lap. “You keep yourself in my bed, in my home. You keep yourself fat on the food I provide for you.”

Hannibal drags slowly, smoke unfurling just as languidly from his parted lips.

“You keep yourself satisfied as well, then, one assumes, so there is little need for me to drive you into the carpet as soon as we step foot in the house, no matter how you beg for it.”

He resists the urge to glance downward, despite how sincerely he would like to watch Will’s fingers as they skim beneath his boxers, feeling himself harden even in light of his chastising. Engrossed as ever in this creature that splays himself across the seats, that makes such grand declarations, that can bend and mold himself to be whatever anyone thinks they need to see in him.

It was a delight, truly, to see him so feigning bashfulness in front of his teacher. Shy and winsome, made uncomfortable as though by his own existence. More satisfaction in this, however, to see his inner debauchery laid so bare.

“You may keep yourself in your own seat then, rather than mine.”

Will moans softly again, disappointed, and manages one more deliberate lick against bare skin before he’s hauled off by his hair and sits back. He takes his time wiping his lip with the back of his wrist, eyes still down to where Hannibal is barely unclothed.

“But I want to suck,” he mopes, the act only partially false, for Hannibal’s amusement. He doesn’t push the petulance enough to hit annoyance - quite yet. He knows the man’s tolerance for such things a lot better now.

“If I can’t satisfy myself with this, now, will you fuck me into the carpet when we get home?” he asks, hopeful. “Tell me to get on my knees, crawl up the stairs, up to the study.” He bites his lip. “Until you get impatient and catch me, strip me bare with no thought for gentleness, spread my legs so wide my cock will brush the floor as you fuck into me…”

He moans again, bites a knuckle gently before settling back in his seat - rather than Hannibal’s - as he was told.

“You’re cruel,” he pouts, the grin evident in his tone.

A brow lifts, at the accusation and the profanities that preceded it, at the declarations of desires that paint profane pictures in Hannibal’s mind. Youthful defiance, an image played up for his pleasure.

“Two,” Hannibal murmurs, happy to play along as he takes another disinterested drag and taps it against the window. Another stop light, and another long look towards Will, curled catlike beside him.

“A better use for your mouth to be stuffed and silenced, it seems, than open and obscene.”

Hannibal sighs exasperation, thighs spreading just so against the seat as though to allow such a thing is an almost unbearable burden.

“Why my study, Will, of all places? Although it isn’t as though you’ve made any sufficient use of it.”

Will unfurls himself again, sets one hand between their seats and with the other plucks the cigarette from Hannibal’s fingers to press between his own lips. A slow, long drag, and when he parts his lips it isn’t to exhale, but to show the smoke curling lazily against the dark of his throat.

He breathes out through his nose, the languid curls vanish. He doesn’t return the stolen cigarette, he tosses it unfinished out the window before curling his shoulders to slip comfortably beneath Hannibal’s arm again, a long lick against exposed skin before he replies.

“Because I liked the last time you fucked me in there.” he replies, partially honest, partially to tease, to bring up that memory again, the video, the flickering images when other hands had touched him instead, hot and demanding and perfect.

Will moans and nuzzles against Hannibal before pulling his cock free.

“And I want you to do it again.”

When he swallows him down, deep but with enough give that forcing him won’t hurt, yet. He doubts Hannibal wants to risk them both dying simply to feel will genuinely choke against him.

Hannibal draws a breath to chasten Will for the cigarette, scarcely smoked and tossed aside, but the words are abruptly silenced by the boy’s mouth flushed, parted damp around him.

Hard enough already, brought more so by the film-flickered images of Will with leather wrapped around tight little fists, laughing gleeful over man twitching in death spasms beneath him. He sucks a breath through his teeth as the boy’s tongue rolls against him, lips curled beautifully and eyes turned upward.

They meet for an instant before Hannibal looks back to the road, tongue parting his lips and hands gripping firm against the wheel.

“Three,” Hannibal reminds him, stifling a moan as Will’s tongue traces against the slit of his cock. “Three for swearing, and three for the points you negligently failed to achieve on your exam.”

He shifts, hips rising from the expensive leather when the boy sucks hard against the head, cheeks hollowed, entirely aware of the boy’s smug pleasure focused attentively on him without needing to meet his eyes again.

“You are a terror,” Hannibal sighs through his teeth.

Will just groans, a low vibration that sets Hannibal twitching against him, thigh incrementally spreading, and Will thinks of how he had had the man beneath him, once, the way he had shifted then as well, had pushed and arched and tugged, just as capable of showing that pleasure as Will is daily.

And yet he still feels much more power, here, now, than he ever did then.

He pulls back and brushes his teeth over the head, enough to feel, enough for Hannibal to shiver and respond in a language Will doesn’t speak, guttural and liquid, before he sinks back down again, and gives him no answer.

Three punishments for three points deliberately avoided.

He doesn’t suppose a punishment quite as cruel as others the man has visited on him in a fit of wrath, this is not him taking apart the man’s life, to be threatened with the basement, not the harsh debasing that had left Will’s throat raw for days after being pushed hard against the stairs.

This is play, wolves batting each other aside in wait for another victim.

Will makes a noise, a gentle little whimpering moan, and takes Hannibal deep enough for the man to feel him swallow around him, just once, before pulling back.

Hannibal throws a glance out the driver and passenger side windows, sees no cars beside them as he slides to a stop, and catches Will by the hair as he tries to shift back to his seat. Brings him near, breathes against his cheek before chasing his mouth to taste the boy’s prideful grin, to taste himself on Will’s tongue.

A rough twist to shove Will back into his seat, thrilling with the instincts sharpening like claws against his nerves, an unspoken agreement with his boy, this fascinating creature, as to what roles they will allow themselves to play tonight.


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He feels his freedom slipping away between his fingers as the boy’s eyes meet his own - not with a demand or a plea, but with a terrifying honesty. More permanent than even killing him, it seems suddenly, his death but a moment that would pass into memory. This is a promise, instead. Tying themselves to each other and fate unknown, ideas and feelings that neither knows well enough to understand or even name.
> 
> Hannibal feels his freedom slipping.
> 
> And in this, he lets it go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **warning for this chapter:** branding
> 
> (just in case we haven't gone far enough already)

Will hardly has time to unfold his legs from where they are drawn to him, feet avoiding the seat, before Hannibal has him by the scruff of his neck. It’s an awkward movement, pushing the car door open at the same time, but with a grin that bears precariously close to a snarl, he pulls Will with him over the center console, dragging him from the driver’s side.

The boy laughs, profane in his pleasure, as he’s hauled into the house and without warning, Hannibal ducks to wraps his arms around the boy’s thighs, hoisting him from the floor and over his shoulder.

A pause, as aware of Will’s grin as if he could see it.

“Remove your boots.”

Will wriggles, amused and pleased by this new development, and stretches his legs far enough not to have his boots fall on Hannibal when he kicks them off his feet.

He’s hard already, from sucking Hannibal off in the car, from knowing, despite the man’s silence on the matter, that he is so proud of Will’s grade. It's a sick sort of familial feeling, and Will pushes the heels of his hands against Hannibal’s shoulder trying to straighten free from his grip.

It's predictably futile and Will laughs again, draping himself over Hannibal instead, nuzzling.

"I suppose you'd better carry me upstairs,” he purrs.

Hannibal lets Will slip a little further and rests his arm comfortably across the backs of his knees. He toes his own shoes off carefully, pushes them aside with sock-clad feet, and unbuttons his coat.

“Are you not capable of crawling, then, as you had insisted?” With a few careful twists to hold Will over him, he manages - miraculously - to remove his coat and hang it. “Just as you were not capable of providing the perfection that you derided as beneath you.”

He clucks his tongue in disappointment and eases his other arm around Will’s legs as well to hold him in place, making his way towards the stairs.

“To the study with you,” Hannibal intones, firming his mouth into a thin line of disapproval. “You asked me what I would do if you failed. Do you remember your suggestion, Will?”

Will brings up an elbow to rest against Hannibal’s back as he’s carried, his cheek against folded fingers.

"I said you should spank me," he grins, “if I failed. I far from failed, Hannibal. And four for my filthy fucken mouth won't an entertaining evening for you make."

He turns to look again, biting his lip, knowing Hannibal had registered the amendment to Will’s lesser punishment, as appropriate.

His heart beats too quickly. He can still feel the slick between his thighs. He wants a shower, he wants Hannibal in there with him, hoisting him against the wall to fuck him deep and draw sounds louder than the white noise from him.

He makes an amused purring sound of pleasure and arches his back, raising his hips momentarily from Hannibal’s shoulder.

A displeased noise, as Will’s weight suddenly shifts, and Hannibal pulls him back down with a firm tug on his skinny legs.

“Then I will spank you until I am entertained sufficiently,” Hannibal responds, pushing open the door to his study, focused on the squirming heaviness of the boy over his shoulder rather than his own hardness caught tight in his pants, still painfully stiff from the ride home.

“So then by all means, Will, continue swearing until your heart’s content. It matters not at this particular juncture.”

He kicks the door closed behind him for no other reason than to feel Will flinch when it bangs shut, and carries him to the center of the room. He’s set down not ungently, and Hannibal’s palms skim longer than necessary up the outside of his thighs, over his hips, his ribs, his neck to push through the curls of hair now wild from being hung upside down.

A kiss breaks the rhythm between them, as Hannibal cups Will’s face in his palms. It is warm, driving deep - pride and a profound pleasure in seeing Will’s displays of brilliance, in his willful misbehaviors, in the nearness of them now and through the evening and when they wake up again tomorrow wrapped close and bruised.

Hannibal sighs, allows the moment to pass, and restores himself with a harsh tug of Will’s hair.

“Stay.”

He stalks towards the couch slowly, peeling off his waistcoat and setting it over the arm. Settling in slowly, a lean smile cuts across his lips.

“Your pants, Will.”

Will turns to watch, but stays still, tilts his head at the words and doesn’t move to obey quite yet. It’s rare that Hannibal allows his body to speak on his behalf, but once in a while he allows the mask he holds so strong to peel back.

There is a gentle softness to the crinkle in his eyes, the way his lip curves barely at the corner of his mouth. The difference between fondness and amusement, a smile and a feeling. Will swallows and chews the inside of his lip.

“Is this your first punishment for me?” Will asks softly, one hand up to tug his hair even more out of order, before falling loose at his side. He smiles wider when Hannibal’s eyes narrow and he raises an eyebrow, expectant.

Slowly, Will brings his hands to the front of his pants, pops the button, slips down the fly, leaves the jeans just open.

“Bare?” he asks, mock-serious.

“Indeed.”

A beat, smile slipping a little wider. “Slowly, Will.”

Hannibal’s attention narrows. Will’s palms spread over his his hips, down against the waistband of his jeans to work them lower. Pale skin revealed where his shirt rides high. Hannibal notes that it is distressingly free of bruises, a canvas unpainted, a garden unplanted.

A tragedy, in truth. The boy wears them beautifully.

Hannibal’s own fingers mirror the motion he sees in Will, splaying against the back of the couch where his arms are draped.

“Your first,” Hannibal suggests softly. “Although if you do not take it well, until such time as I decide I am finished, it will be merely a prelude to the punishments yet to come.”

He draws a breath at the first soft hairs that curl where Will’s boxers slip a little too low, a twitch of tension in his hands now, resistance to reaching down to touch himself while he watches the boy’s display.

Better to savor, than to swallow whole.

Will’s lips twist gently, amused, and he takes a breath, hands sliding the fabric promisingly low before he turns on his heel, shows nothing but his back, the way the jeans hang looser there now that he’s slid them as far as he has.

He can almost feel the way Hannibal’s fingers curl into fists, again, at the frustration, at the denial of seeing the boy made bare by his own hands, and yet, Will doesn’t stop moving, not now, he keeps sliding the denim lower, shifts his hips gently one way, then the other, working the pants lower still until he just bends, arches his back, and peels the close-fitting garment off.

Around his ankles, as commanded, before Will straightens, turns barely to the side and tugs his sweater over his head as well, tossing it away, before bringing up his hands to work the buttons on his shirt.

Every movement, every brush of fingers against bare skin, draws Hannibal’s attention, entirely aware that Will revels in feeling his gaze as much as Hannibal revels in yielding it to him. Lean, long lines, elegant and lithe, exposed in inches and gestures carefully cultivated.

A far cry from the rough stripping-down that Will had demanded earlier, but equally as gratifying.

Will grins, feels his cheeks color, and says nothing until he’s entirely bare. Then he turns to look over his shoulders, for further instructions.

“Over my legs.”

A scent caught on the air from the boy’s bared body. The sweetness of the creature himself, known all too well by now but entirely intoxicating all the same, and against that warmth the musky smell of sex, their furtive releases still smeared across his skin.

Hannibal’s smile widens.

Will grins, ducks his head in genuine amusement at the command and steps out of his pants before walking closer. He knows what Hannibal means, he knows what he wants, and yet when he settles over Hannibal’s legs he isn’t bent over them.

“You didn’t say bend,” Will murmurs, pressing close to kiss Hannibal, lips parted and eyes closed, exhaling hard against his cheek before pulling back with a smile.

“I know what you want, I know you will get it but -” He presses two fingers to Hannibal’s mouth and, miraculously, the man allows it, lets Will finish. “You are proud of me. I missed one question and I killed the curve. The youngest, the smartest.”

His smile is crooked and pleased, and he rolls his hips against Hannibal’s in a gentle, pleasing way.

“Just… let me have today,” he asks, hand away from Hannibal’s mouth to slip both down to undo his belt. “Let’s drink. Talk. Fuck.” He wrinkles his nose, teasing, pulls the belt from Hannibal’s pants and loops it around his own neck. “And tomorrow use this, and not your hand, and see how sufficiently I hold still.”

Had Will pitched his request a note higher to beg, or a note lower to demand, he would have found himself wanting for the desired response. Perhaps met with a hand brought hard across his mouth for swearing, rather than pressed warm against his cheek.

But as it is, Hannibal lets slip the visage of imperiousness - and the curse - that would have had the boy spanked to tears, and settles back instead into the same man that had kissed Will moments before. It is a more difficult thing, to relinquish the remove provided by facades and relax instead into something more exposed, but as they both let their masks fall away Hannibal can't help but wonder if perhaps it's getting easier.

Tugging the belt from his boy's neck, still with a shiver at the whisper of leather sliding over skin, he lets it fall aside to gather Will in his arms.

It is not often than Hannibal feels spoiled, but Will's words swell in him - the cleverness superseding his age, the uncanny awareness and understanding of himself and others, the willingness to take pain so exquisitely that he would suggest a means for it...

Hannibal sighs.

"Reward before punishment. Dessert before dinner,” Hannibal agrees, quietly amused. “Consumption smoothing, for stored social capital."

He pulls Will into a bend, chest beneath his mouth to lay the kind of kisses on it he'd been imagining since the boy's catlike curling in the classroom, open adoration of the young and intoxicating thing squirming against him.

Hannibal lifts his eyes from beneath an unsettled fringe of hair, a glimmer of light in them. His hands slide beneath his boy's thighs, just under the curve of his ass to spread his legs and bring their hips closer together.

"I am, immensely," Hannibal finally admits, an acquiescence scarcely spoken, before his voice strengthens. "And so you will choose what we drink together, although the fire put into you by whiskey always seems to suit."

Will hums, pleased that his request had been permitted, had not been utterly rejected. Negotiation. It weighs against him, somewhat, how they're acting, what this means. It pulls far too close to territory neither want to trespass.

"Then whiskey, please," he responds, waits to see if he'll be released to be allowed to get it himself or if, for the moment, unharmed as he has been permitted to remain today, he is to sit and be enjoyed.

His hands settle against Hannibal’s hair, over his shoulder, and he stretches, here, again, in a comfortable opening of his body, a gentle reminder, teaser, implication for later.

He rocks his hips forward and up, smiles at the response and does it again.

Another low sound, pleased, in response to the movements, as Hannibal’s hips rise to meet the motion atop him. He glances towards the sideboard, at a distance from where they sit so comfortably, and considers.

A shift forward, tucking an arm beneath the boy to lift him as he stands and carries him, wrapped around Hannibal as he is with skinny arms and skinny legs, to fetch the bottle. He takes up an unopened handle of bourbon, uncaring for the moment as to which one it is, and tilts his head to accommodate the kisses that fall against his neck.

“Spoiled,” comes the murmur, no venom in Hannibal’s chiding. Time enough for that tomorrow, to raise welts on the boy with straps and words, to feel that cruel snarl of joy as he marks the boy’s skin as his own again.

Setting the bottle down beside the couch, Hannibal lowers them both back onto it, himself beneath and the boy atop, and he wonders absently when this became the preferred formation for them both.

Will says nothing, just brings his hands up to work the buttons of Hannibal’s shirt slowly as he devours the skin revealed him.

He pulls back enough to get the bottle and sits back - opens it, and takes a long deliberate pull, eyes on Hannibal as he smiles around the lip of the bottle and sets it against his thigh, shaking his head with a laugh once he's swallowed.

"Cheers," he grins, taking up the bottle again to pass to Hannibal to drink from, kissing him before he can. Will can feel the heat of the alcohol run through him already, resolves not to drink enough to dissipate the evening into a waste.

Hannibal shifts, shrugging out of the shirt, and lets it fall to the floor. There’s a curious moment as it does, and Hannibal regards the folds of fabric not hung neatly but left unattended instead with a lingering look.

Something like discomfort with the concept of such a thing occurring at all, but pushed aside for the moment as he takes the bottle from Will and takes a drink directly from it.

It should bother him more than it does, all this careless disregard, and the fact it does not immediately alarm him with more than just a passing interest is alarming in and of itself. A disruption of rhythms rendered suddenly stark, and its source writhing astride him with fingers against the fly of his pants. Insinuating himself in ways that Hannibal has not expected, breaking apart in a matter of months the firmly entrenched patterns built over years.

An easy distraction, then, to chase the whiskey from Will’s mouth with his own, down across his chin to his neck, to drink up the taste of his skin and his little sounds.

“You will be the ruin of me,” Hannibal declares quietly, his voice low, liquor-rough. “If this is the reward for a test passed, what’s to be done when you excel in the entire class? In your semester?”

Will grins at how the words flow so confident, not a suggestion he try but a suggestion Hannibal would need to adjust his rewards accordingly. 

"I have absolute faith in your creativity, Hannibal," Will replies, a soft moan pulled from him as he deepens the arch in his back, feels Hannibal hungrily taste that skin as well.

It's a moment more before Will takes the bottle back for another sip. It’s too soft, like this, too gentle and yet nothing of their situation suggests gentleness, suggests kindness and normalcy. Not their age difference; Hannibal's cradle-robbing to have Will pliant in his bed, willing and eager to return. Not the violence he visits upon him.

"Especially when it comes to your clever boy."

Will grins, bites his lip, remembers laughing when he'd first met Hannibal at how decadent the man was, smoking in his expensive car, defiling the space with the acrid lingering smell.

He resists the urge to spill the alcohol down his chest to feel the older man lap it up, and instead presses closer and moans again, a shiver caressing his spine.

Hannibal’s hands fall against the boy’s hips, hold him in place enough for a long, hard press of his own beneath him.

“One hopes you remain so clever,” Hannibal responds, a mild warning, another roll of hips. “As grows the potential for pleasing me, so does the potential for disappointment.” His palm presses against the boy’s belly, spanning up across his hairless chest to find its place in his hair, twisting sharp enough to earn a gasp. “My expectations are extraordinarily high, Will, and punishments meted out will worsen for you far more readily than the rewards will increase.”

He pulls Will down against him, ignoring the whiskey that spills against the leather beneath them, and meets his mouth with a moan.

Grounding them both with the provision and receipt of pain, their first common language, their first familiar connection. Far easier to understand than the new curiosities developing between them, more comprehensible than the moments of warmth that feel nearly as satisfying.

“If you are mine, then I expect you to perform as an extension of myself,” Hannibal informs him, mouth pressed against the boy’s neck, teeth grazing the boy’s soft skin to pinch it in warning. “It would be far more dull than perfection to have to wonder why a student in my mentorship is not superior to any other in compare.”

Will, lips part on a gasp and he rides this out, slow rocking, a gentle beginning to something far more familiar. His hips turn one way, then the other, as he remains pressed close to Hannibal, feels his teeth.

"Yes, sir," he sighs, despite his smile, entirely genuine in his understanding. Even in the few months this has been happening, more and more Will has noticed how hungrily Hannibal protects his reputation, how carefully he constructs the facade.

"I am yours," Will moans, "to teach and create, to reward, punish, destroy..." He shivers again, aroused and teased by the slow rubbing between them, warmed and pliant by the whiskey. He doesn't need more, but he takes a gentle sip regardless.

No space between them now for strange silences and unspoken questions, filled again by the movement of bodies, the quickening promise of violence, snarled whispers thick with threat. But neither does this remove the pull that runs deeper between them, digging between ribs and pressing outward.

“Yes,” Hannibal sighs, harsh assent, and bites down harder still as though to stop the boy’s motions, jerks his head to the side to bare his neck with curls fisted between his fingers. Submission, openly given, as the boy bends and gasps and still rubs his cock against Hannibal’s own. To please, and be pleased in return.

“How does it make you feel, Will, to think of yourself as such?” A slight smile, seen only in the corners of his eyes. “For one who keeps himself to instead know himself as kept.”

Will twists gently, makes another of those soft kitten murmurs of pleasure, closes his eyes as color fills his cheeks once more. His own words turned on their back, fed back to him to see how they taste.

He licks his lips.

"I'm yours," he repeats, breathless. And they both understand the truth of it, the power behind it. A direct and whole submission in so much as Will can give. In so much as Hannibal wants.

He will never be a doll, a beautiful breathing doll to dress and tilt his head and smile. He will bite back, struggle, leave his own marks on his tormentor, his teacher, his lover. And Hannibal would never want him any different. He would tire of obedience, tire of meting out punishment that is accepted with a smile - he wants it earned, he wants to watch Will both arch into it and sob in genuine pain at the end.

He wants blood, he wants marks and pleas and spread legs by command and choice both.

"It makes me feel worthy," Will moans. 

Hannibal does not return the words, but he feels them, as though prying tendons from bones, sinews from sinews. His own worth weighed far heavier than he finds comprehensible in the eyes of this boy, decades younger, whose mouth he steals the breath from with a smothering kiss. This boy desired by all who meet him, sought and courted, bought and sworn loyalty to by countless men, who chooses - for it’s nothing other than his choice, Hannibal knows with whiskey-thick honesty - to share Hannibal’s bed with him, to reveal all the light and darkness that roils inside of him.

Dyadic cooperation, each only worth as much as the other considers them to be, each possessing rare attributes, prized and worshipped.

As now Hannibal does, sitting up beneath Will and surrounding him with an arm to keep him in place, teeth against his collarbone, lips closing after to chase each bite with a kiss, as his other hand drops to stroke hard along the length of him.

Adoration, open and obscene, of this boy young enough to be his child, who holds Hannibal in his sway.

“Would that I could mark you as such,” Hannibal breathes against his skin, watching with dark-eyed fascination as Will dips his head, keens and moans beneath Hannibal’s touch. “So that the others who touch you will know that you will never be theirs. Brand you as mine, and mine alone.”

A threat made seemingly in dark humor, as so many are when they find themselves this way, now freed further by the whiskey hot between them. The same black pleasure as when he considers aloud tying Will down and leaving him until he feels so moved to free him, days later - as when he discusses what dishes would best mirror his particular difficulty, when the boy is being troublesome.

Affections both cruel and unusual that earn a quick grin from the only one who has earned them.

“Nnn - you mark me every day,” Will points out, feeling his heart hammer against the hot press of lips on his skin. But as Hannibal says nothing in return, no hum of amusement, no agreement with him, Will’s heart speeds up from entirely different stimulus.

He twists a little, enough to make it clear he wants release, and Hannibal allows it, for Will to pull back, to set his eyes on him, brows furrowed in disbelief, in a desperate need to have the words denied, rephrased, adjusted.

They’re not.

Men have tried to mark him before, with pretentious claims that they would carve words into him, their names, derogatory statements; pet, slut, mine. And on every man’s lips but Hannibal’s the last word sat like oil on Will’s skin, slick and revolting, something to be washed clean that water could not always help with.

From Hannibal’s lips, the words sounded like home.

He swallows, shakes his head slowly and turns his eyes down. He can see the bruises already forming where Hannibal had hungrily sucked them against him, and knows they’re not enough, knows the man wants more from him. A permanence that at once excites and terrifies Will in a way he can’t phrase in words.

A soft sound and Will’s eyes meet Hannibal’s again, careful, seeking a lie there, finding none.

“I’ll be _yours_ if you mark me,” he tells him, a reminder, a last moment to deny the words under pretense of alcohol and lust.

 _No_ , Hannibal hears distant inside of him. Stop now and end this. Leave temporary wounds on him that will heal, if you release him, or matter not, if you kill him. Too much control, yielded and taken too quickly, and Hannibal’s pulse jumps as if in hunt. As if hunted.

He feels his freedom slipping away between his fingers as the boy’s eyes meet his own not with a demand or a plea, but with a terrifying honesty. More permanent than even killing him, it seems suddenly, his death but a moment that would pass into memory. This - a promise, instead. Tying themselves to each other and fate unknown, ideas and feelings that neither knows well enough to understand or even name.

Hannibal feels his freedom slipping.

And in this, he lets it go.

“Yes.”

The word Will feels like the harshest slap and Will jerks, hands gripping hard against firm shoulders, head ducked, before he leans closer, sighs against him, feels warm breath exhaled against him in turn before he kisses him.

Will thinks back to the scene where he had opened the man up enough to spray blood to the ceiling, all from the true and genuine panic of being branded by him, claimed. Marked.

 _You were frightened_ , Hannibal had pointed out, indifferent at the time, storing away information for later torment, _it does not happen often_.

“Where?” Will asks, pulling back and breathless, body stilled for the moment in its tension, surprise, worry.

“Where will you do it?”

He waits a moment, and asks, before the first answer is given, before Hannibal has taken a breath; asked so that he won’t lose the courage to later.

“How?”

Hannibal resists the urge to pull him close again, to feel against his own skin the tension snapping through Will in fright, in panic. The fearfulness makes itself manifest in the boy far more obviously than it does in Hannibal, but it mirrors his own and he allows the rare feeling to come to him, lets it wash over him and accepts it.

He brushes the backs of his fingers up across Will’s cheek, does not deny him the ability to see his face, the openness of Hannibal’s expression in this moment, knowing how Will seeks it to ground him from this sudden terror, of permanence and intimacy yet unbroached by either.

A quiet hum, pushing the boy’s hair back from his face with a gentle hand and bringing it to the back of his neck. Remaining steadfast as Will does not, despite the way Hannibal’s heart mirrors, racing.

“Something small,” Hannibal replies softly. “So that it will not be seen by your prey, but where you will feel it when their hands press against you.”

Without releasing the stabilizing hand from beneath Will’s hair, Hannibal skirts his other fingers along Will’s bare leg. Finds a particular place where he has pressed his mouth, his teeth, his touch countless times before, high on his thigh near his groin.

“There.” Hannibal moves now to kiss the corner of Will's mouth twisted frowning with concern. “We will share a cigarette together, as we did when you first slid into my car with your dirty boots and that hideous sweater.”

Will trembles, says nothing, allows the words to flow through him, allows the touches to slide over his skin. At length he leans in again, lips soft to Hannibal’s, hand skimming down his body to reach for the pack in his pocket, for the lighter.

“Not here,” he sighs, nuzzles, and climbs off of Hannibal, taking the pack and lighter with him. He stops to pick up his clothes, mindful, for a moment, and carefully leaves the study, door open for Hannibal to follow.

The clothes are dumped, messy as always, on the chest at the end of their bed, and Will sets the cigarettes on the bed before walking to the bathroom. The tap runs, a soft cloth soaking up the cool water before Will washes himself down, just gently, enough to no longer be tacky against his skin, or flaking.

When he returns he smiles, stretches in that slow, cat-like way, and presses himself into Hannibal’s arms without invitation, hand seeking to his right to pull a single cigarette from the pack as he bring it up with the lighter to set the tobacco burning.

It’s a long inhale, slow, deliberate, and Will holds it before exhaling just as slow, eyes on Hannibal through the dirty smoke, he turns his hand, sets the cigarette against Hannibal’s lips and smiles, stepping away to crawl back onto the bed and lie down, casually splayed, just watching.

Hannibal stands where he is, taking a moment to watch the boy move. Earnest appreciation for the spry limbs long and lean, the hidden strength and skills beneath Will’s pale skin. Fast, capable of frenzy - a fierce fight contained in a vessel of youth and beauty.

A plume of smoke is drawn back past Hannibal’s lips before it can escape, pulled deep inside of him, held until his lungs scald with it and he releases it through his nose. A monster curling flames from the darkness inside.

His pants are undone but remain loose on his hips, shirtless, barefoot. A state of undress, made that way in body and in mind by the boy whose hands stretch and grasp against his headboard.

“You asked me to let you have today, Will,” Hannibal intones, not ungently, remaining where he stands. He considers the cigarette still long between his fingers, gives no thought to his rule about smoking in the house, and then watches Will from beneath his hair, made untidy by a child’s grasping fingers.

“Do you truly desire this?”

Will tilts his head and looks at Hannibal again, expression clear, not resigned but prepared. His pulse throbs against his throat, he knows Hannibal can see it. He hums, a gentle sound, and draws his knees up a little, arches his back in a stretch before holding out his hand for the cigarette again.

Answer in itself, but he wonders if Hannibal wants it verbally, if this contract must be signed with his voice so he can never use it after, again.

The thought amuses him.

When the filter is passed to his fingers he smiles, presses the thing between his lips and closes his eyes as he breathes in.

He concentrates on listening to the hissing of the burn, as the tobacco and paper fold under the relentless element they can’t control nor invited. Will wonders if he invited it.

He turns, just enough, to hook his foot against Hannibal’s leg and tug, eyes up to watch as the man considers, relents, and sets his hands on either side of Will’s head as he leans nearer.

“Yes,” Will tells him honestly.

Smoke unfurls past his lips as he speaks the word, given tangible form in a pale cloud that Hannibal breathes in, lets roll over his hair, his skin, sinking into him. He shifts Will gently aside, joining him on the bed to lay heavy over him, mouths meeting languidly as he settles between his thighs and feels them wrap around him in response.

Hannibal has hardly moved enough to breathe before Will presses the cigarette to his mouth instead, eyes wide as the embers flare and smoke pulls inside of Hannibal with a crackle. Soft fingers trace against the curves of Hannibal’s mouth, boyish curiosity. The smoke is held, singeing heat inside Hannibal’s chest, his throat, until Will leans towards him, lips parted.

Pale tendrils pass between them, drawn from Hannibal and pulled into Will, a shared breath between them. He smiles as Will releases it again, a grin appearing when the cloud curls towards the ceiling.

Will laughs, a gentle noise, pleased and warm, and takes his turn. He wonders where he can ash it, so it doesn’t land on the floor, and, inevitably, on his tongue after. He arches, relishes in how Hannibal leans in to kiss his throat, to place one hot palm against his side to hold him still as Will twists just enough to reach the glass of water on the bedside table. His side - Hannibal doesn’t leave things in the room that don’t belong there.

He ashes it, watches them disperse over the surface, some heavier parts start to sink within.

Will moans quietly as Hannibal rubs against him, and spreads his legs wider in invitation, the alcohol and smoke making him languid, sleepy, soft and pliant for Hannibal.

“You’ll trace your fingers over it,” he sighs, turning his wrist, again, to set the filter between Hannibal’s lips, lets it go now for the man to control on his own as he drapes his hands above his head.

“You’ll press your lips there and outline it with your tongue,” he bites his lip.

“Yes,” Hannibal replies, sucking in another harsh mouthful of smoke, cigarette turning between his fingers. He sighs it soft beneath Will’s chin, watches as it billows up around him like mist and fades, warmth wrapping through them both as Will arches into the grey.

It is Hannibal’s mark to bear as well, branded far deeper than skin - irreparably changed by this winsome and cruel creature beneath him. A satyr - no, yet a faun, but capable of all manner of ecstasies, lust and violence each in turn, fucking and fighting, rutting and rending bodies limb from limb.

Hannibal shifts in his own discomfort with the thought, bound in willing submission to this boy, but he reminds himself that it is Will whose skin will wear the scar, and that despite his extraordinary nature he is a child still. There is fear glimpsed beneath the edges of the mask he puts bravely forward when his blue eyes dart towards the cigarette held aloft in Hannibal’s hand.

“I will worship at it,” Hannibal whispers against Will’s neck, just beneath his ear, holding the cigarette now for Will’s mouth to press again.

Will moans, takes the offering willingly and arches up to exhale.

It grows smaller and smaller between them, a ritual, taken in to be worn without. A thing that will not fade once the smell does from the room and from their hair.

Will’s hands don’t come down from above his head where he weaves his fingers between the slats. The motions stretch his body taut, arch him, bend him in ways he knows the man above him adores… and will continue to, the mark a promise Will can tangibly present him. But he fears, he worries, that perhaps the mark will mar him, create an ugliness neither of them foresee…

He turns his head to nuzzle against Hannibal’s hair as he takes his own long inhale and breathes warm smoke over Will’s chest again. A hand, practiced, reaching over to ash the cigarette as Will had, into the glass. A thicker band of ash in the water now, more pieces sinking now, as others cling to the surface.

Will wonders what he will be.

Obediently he parts his lips for the cigarette again, eyes hooded and meeting Hannibal’s before he smiles and opens his mouth, just barely, like he had in the car, to show the swirling smoke within before he huffs it out through his nose instead.

Just one more. Hannibal’s.

Will’s smile doesn’t waver, but his brows press closer.

Hannibal's drag to take, but not to hold, no more than he can truly hold the wild boy who watches wary as the ashes build and the smoke pulls away.

He feeds it back, from himself to Will, shares it as Hannibal shares his kills to feed him, as he shares in the torrents of blood spilled by Will's hand. As he shares his bed and his body, his home and his heart, thundering now in his chest. A relinquishment of control once held in an iron grip that now slides from his grasp.

Smoke.

It rises between them, together, as their lips part and Hannibal leans back. He slides onto his knees, legs beneath him, and snares Will around the waist. Tugs him off the bed and pulls him up into his lap, braced tight, thighs spread.

Dark eyes, lightless pupils shadowed further still as Hannibal presses his forehead against Will's, holding him fast. Pulse racing unabated, breath short as it sings in his ears.

He turns the cigarette over between his fingers. A final chance at escape for them both.

"Are you mine, Will?"

Will’s started to tremble, now, unable to hide the fear of this as he hides the fear of being abandoned, of being tossed away, of being marked by another. He takes quick breaths and says nothing for a moment, fixes his eyes on Hannibal’s and waits. His heart beats in his ears, in his throat, anywhere but his chest where it belongs.

After what feels like hours, of air held in his lungs, burning there, of silence, Will nods, eyelids barely touching in a semi-blink, an exhale shuddering through his bones when he releases it.

“Yes.”

Hannibal licks his lips briefly, not a hungry gesture, not here.

“Spread wider, for me, Will.”

The boy swallows, the sound audible, and bites his lip before shifting to obey, tremors overtaking him again as he settles one hand against the bed, curled in the sheets, the other over Hannibal’s shoulder.

“Stay still.”

Hannibal’s attention drops, focuses on the skinny thighs shaking against him, and his hand tightens against Will’s hip, arm wrapped firm around him. He reaches in with his other hand, finds that secret place where he’s brushed kisses so many times before, far enough from the femoral not to risk the lovely thinness of the skin too close to it.

Hannibal traces over it with his thumb, fine hairs soft beneath his fingers.

“Breathe, Will.”

Eyes wide, the boy starts to take the quaking breath and as he does, Hannibal turns his fingers and presses.

A cry, high and pained. Burnt hair and burnt flesh, acrid and sharp. Hannibal’s muscles snap tight to hold him in place as Will shakes, twisting the cigarette to extinguish it, darkening perfect pale skin to claim it as his own.

Another sound, a whine, a long, agonized sound, and Will doesn’t seem to take a breath to continue it, it’s pulled from his throat as though by a wire and he can’t make it end. When the sound ends it’s on a sob and he turns his head against Hannibal, smearing the telltale dampness of tears against him, though he holds impressively still as the torment continues.

The sobs become more regular, soft pitiful things but Will makes no more sound, no more cries or keens, he doesn’t beg - and he doesn’t move. Even as Hannibal loosens his grip a little, Will doesn’t struggle away, he does nothing more than draw heaving breaths through clenched teeth and nuzzle almost violently against the man in front of him.

The trembling doesn’t cease, not for a long time.

Hannibal shifts at the drive of Will’s body against his own, untucks his legs from beneath him and pulls Will near again. The filter is discarded to the floor somewhere beside the bed and both arms wrap now, securing his boy close to feel him shake.

“Shh,” Hannibal sighs, turning his cheek against Will’s hair. “Breathe, Will.”

He closes his eyes, broad hands spreading over Will’s back, to ease the pain from him, to ease the terror, aching as another quiet sob wracks the little thing trembling in his arms.

“Remarkable boy,” he praises him, and brings a hand up to his hair to stroke softly. “You held so still for me.”

Enraptured entirely by the memory of Will’s skin blistering, darkening beneath the ash, burnt into himself just as much. Held in thrall by the boy who curls tighter towards him now, every muscle alive and twitching with pain and fear and adrenaline. His own nerves feel as though they are alight beneath his skin, breathless as he grazes kisses over any part of the boy that he can reach.

A kiss against Will's neck, his cheek, wet with tears, his temple and his hair. Covering him in them, laying open adoration against his skin, breathed against his ear.

“My beautiful boy.”

Will slowly returns to himself, one breath at a time, one agonizing shudder after the other until they ebb away, until he’s left exhausted and tearful, held so tightly he feels like he could never fall apart.

He sniffs, parts his lips to breathe slowly, to force his heart to ease, then he licks his lips and presses his palms gently against Hannibal’s chest to push him back, just enough to nuzzle his nose against Hannibal’s, enough to hum gently and press their lips together in something soft, gentle, juxtaposed with the throbbing pain that thumps with his heart against the inside of his thigh.

He feels the familiar elation, the unbelievable rush that comes with pain fill his blood and thrum it through his limbs. Then he smiles, grins, and kisses Hannibal again, fingers twisting in his hair, now, just to feel the strands against his hand.

Hannibal looks at the crooked grin, his boy’s eyes still red with tears, and he sighs a laugh, rare enough to make up for the quiet of it. Utterly delighted, openly impressed by Will’s resilience.

He tilts his head beneath Will’s fingers that shake a little even still, and Hannibal allows himself to be moved, tugged closer for another lingering kiss. Sinking his arms deeper around Will’s waist, he sighs against his mouth, eyes closed to focus on the feel of him, flushed warm and trembling with adrenaline.

“I am yours,” Hannibal murmurs softly, pressing his head to Will’s temple, tilting him into another kiss against his dampened cheek. A confession that finally eases the snarled tension in his chest, that allows him to breathe more freely than he has all night, and that fills the spaces between them, uncertain and new though they remain, now given voice at last.

A name, with all the power that entails.


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The pleasure in watching Will prepare the meal is profound, seeing him entirely unaffected by any sense of morals or ethics or existential quandaries. No hesitation as he scoops the meat in his bare hand to press it again through the machine, simply a placid acceptance of his role in this - a role which once may have been the one fed through the grinder, rather than the one grinding.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **warning for this chapter:** graphic descriptions of cannibalism (enough to be worth noting!)

Hannibal knows the song well enough by now.

The prelude begins with a soft susurrus of fabric, coat removed and hung. Beats in time of boots dropped beside the door, and one more, forte, as the bookbag is dumped beside them. A swell of sound in a crescendo rising, footsteps thumping nearer the kitchen, where Hannibal raises his attention to the composer of this particular melody.

“Hello, Will. I am nearly finished.”

He turns back smoothly to the stove, another symphony in play, and feels Will’s slight smile without needing to see it.

Neither comments on the domesticity of the moment, an unspoken resistance to acknowledging that it exists at all between them. Both know well enough that doing so ends, as ever, in blood spilled and faces broken, bodies spilled across floors and stairs in carnage and carnality.

A benefit to both to know how to trigger it, certainly, but at peace enough for now to allow its tenuous existence to remain between them.

Will settles against the counter, spreads himself over it, just perching on the stool.

"Starving," Will purrs, dragging the vowel and stretching himself further. He watches Hannibal work, watches the way his muscles shift beneath his pristine shirt, how deftly he handles the knives and any other instruments pertinent to the preparation of this particular meal.

This one wanted to be a doctor, Will recalls Hannibal telling him. So Hannibal had kindly taught him the intricacies of dissection.

"Can I help?"

Hannibal turns his eyes up to watch the spread of boy - this one yet alive - across the counter. Arms folding beneath his head, cheek against them, watching the precise cuts stroked along the meat to slice it thin.

“I don’t know, Will. Can you?” A brief smile plays across Hannibal’s expression, in good spirits, it seems, as he enjoys the gentle rejoinder. “You may slice the baguette, if you like, for the crostini. There is garlic butter beside it. Brush both sides and set them along the baking tray.”

He allows himself to observe as the boy slides from the stool, fingers dragging across the counters as he passes them. Lanky and long and guileless, but a child in years alone. A monster, a walking obscenity, that turns a crooked grin towards him as he leans against the counter by the bread, hands back against it and back arching.

“What are we having?”

Hannibal is surprised, still, at Will’s blithe acceptance of this in particular, the meat dark and especially tender beneath his fingers. He was sixteen, if a day. He wonders if Will feels a relief in it, knowing it’s another boy and not him. If he feels envy, or if that merely applies to the tenderizing that precedes butchery.

Or, more barbaric even still, perhaps he pays no mind to it at all.

“Tartare, with white truffle oil and fried capers, on crostini.” A pause, attention shifting to watch Will take up the nearest knife. Hannibal clucks his tongue. “The one beside it, Will. Serrated.”

Will returns the knife, carefully, and takes, instead, the one directed.

"I wonder if I'll ever come home to hot dogs," Will grins, fingers splaying over the bread before slicing the baguette diagonally, to elongate the slices.

"Burgers," he continues, amused, as they work side by side to create a meal that would only be seen in high-end restaurants and still not taste as good as Will knows this will.

"Nachos. Something obscenely messy, quick, no health value whatsoever." He bites his lip, runs the flat of his finger down either side of the knife, dusting the crumbs away. He takes up the butter, surprisingly careful with it as he brushes it over the bread.

"I wonder if you'll ever let me make you dinner."

He grins, glances over, brings up a finger to lick clean of the butter he'd accidentally dipped the tip into.

Hannibal is caught in watching the display, as Will knew he would be, and the boy’s lips are still wrapped around his finger when they curve into a grin. Turning away, Hannibal hums a vaguely disapproving sound, as he must.

“Not if that’s what you intend to make,” responds Hannibal, setting his knife aside to gather the strips of meat. “And certainly not in this kitchen.”

The idea that remains, however, is far more ghastly than anything he’s considered thus far in the evening. Not in his kitchen, but in Will’s instead. Seated on the flat-cushioned couch in the boy’s apartment, expected to eat delivery pizza from a paper plate held above his lap.

Another soft sound of dismay, but it passes as he begins to gather the slices of meat from the cutting board. A pause, considering the dense strips dripping against the cutting board.

This one had held his hand, Hannibal recalls. Laced their fingers together when Hannibal held them pinned gently above his head.

“Would you like to grind the meat?” he suggests, a pluck of curiosity in it. “It must be, before we are able to mix it for a tartare.”

Will blinks, tilts his head in mild consideration and attempts to hide the genuine delight in being asked to help. Finally, he nods, smiles, makes sure that the butter won't drip where he leaves the brush, won't mess the counter or ruin the presentation Hannibal intends.

He rinses his hands, too, flicking the water back into the sink before taking up a towel.

His sleeves are pulled up over his elbows, a retro shirt, today, with a longer one beneath. It had perhaps once been white, now a dull soft gray with age, thankfully, not lack of hygiene.

"Will you show me?" he asks, coy, demure, his smile wicked despite the tone, and he steps up to Hannibal properly now.

“Certainly. There is a bowl chilling in the refrigerator, if you would bring it over.”

He directs it with an easy motion to beneath the grinder, and sets the cuts inside of the feeder. A brief denouement to wash his hands, insisting that Will do the same, and he stands behind the boy as they return to the device, clamped as it is to the counter.

“It is easy enough,” Hannibal assures him. “A steady turn of the wrist, here,” he instructs, setting Will’s fingers against the handle. “And a firm pressure, here.” A motion to the meat, now, in the grinder.

Hannibal lifts his glass of wine from nearby, and ducks his head against Will, nose brushing his temple. “Do not catch your fingers. Or do, and some portion of this will be particularly fresh.”

"Was he not fresh enough?" Will asks, for a moment appearing genuinely surprised before clicking his tongue. "Politeness ruining a dish, in itself rude."

He keeps a straight face at his own joke, relishes the warm hum of Hannibal's amusement, before the glass is returned to the counter and Hannibal guides Will to begin.

The machine turns smoothly, pristine metal and apparently unused, if Will didn't know better. He leans back, just enough, against the older man and continues the careful turning as the warm, rough hands slide up Will’s arms instead, to his shoulders, as a kiss lingers against his hair.

Will wonders how many times Hannibal kissed this boy, wonders if it was a countdown to his inevitable end.

"Intricate," he notes, gently pushing the meat into the feeder, fingers deft enough to not get caught. "Is the meal worth the time spent on it?"

Hannibal lets his hands linger there, watching over Will as he works, cheek resting against his hair.

“If it were not, then I would not have spent the time, nor desire the meal,” he responds after a moment of consideration. “This one, in particular, only appears to be complex. It is in fact very simple. Minimal preparation to yield extraordinary flavors.”

A kiss, grazed against Will’s shoulder. “Now, feed it back through a second time, to ensure the proper consistency.”

The pleasure in watching Will prepare the meal is profound, seeing him entirely unaffected by any sense of morals or ethics or existential quandaries. No hesitation as he scoops the meat in his bare hand to press it again through the machine, simply a placid acceptance of his role in this - a role which once may have been the one fed through the grinder, rather than the one grinding.

Hannibal steps away to remove the crostini from the oven and set them out. “But if this meal does not suit you,” he continues, “then perhaps I will make you the vaunted hot dogs that you so desire. Sausage, fresh fennel and caraway. Ground mustard alongside.”

Will grins, eyes narrowed in delight at the answer, and continues to grind the meat again, finding it more difficult now than before simply because the meat is now so finely ground. 

"Bitter?" Will ventures instead.

"Far from it," Hannibal counters, a smile in his eyes but not yet touching his lips. "Very forthcoming. Honest. Pleasing. So many dreams for one so young."

Will listens, just barely resisting the urge to lick his fingers, from habit, rather than general desire to taste the thick cloying taste of uncooked meat.

"The meat is only bitter if it's frightened, Will," Hannibal offers, the young man looks up, meets his eyes for a long time.

“Sweet, then,” Will finally suggests.

A note of agreement, soft, recalling the particular light that caught in the departed boy’s dark eyes when he found out that Hannibal is a doctor. The cautious questions, seeking, but with unsteady questions, unsteady fingers.

“Almost unbearably,” Hannibal admits, turning then to mix the emulsion.

He continues. “Meat takes on the characteristics of what sustains it. If fear, then you will taste the acid of the blood that carried through muscles to drive them into flight. If kindness, you will find that tenderness on your tongue, the relaxation of the muscles just prior to death.”

Hannibal allows a touch to graze the back of Will’s hand as he takes the bowl from him, the work complete, to resume mixing the tartare.

“What I desire may vary. So then do the preparations.”

Hannibal hesitates, considers his words before he speaks them, and allows himself to experience how entirely the thought rends him now.

“There was a recipe I wished to try. A Oaxacan barbacoa with guajillo peppers, in an adobo marinade. I had finally located the epazote and dried avocado leaves in a small grocery downtown.” A pause. “In light of that, you seemed like such a happy coincidence that night.”

Will tilts his head, stepping close to Hannibal again as he cleans his hands once more.

"Does the recipe call for tenderized meat?" he asks, recalling the bruises he had limped away from here wearing. “Suppleness, enough body to remain chewy?"

Will doesn't know the dish, but he's fairly sure the main ingredient rarely involves sass and resistance. He wonders how many chefs could lay a claim to having their main ingredient escape them, again and again.

"Tell me how it's made,” he asks suddenly, licking his lip into his mouth and biting hard, eyes bright and wide up on Hannibal as the man works. Will can feel his heart beat harsh against his ribs, not yet fast but pulsing, full.

Alive.

"What kind of lamb was I to you?" He moves to stand behind Hannibal, partially to stand on tiptoes and watch over his shoulder as he works, mostly to curl against him, hot and warm and young. Eager to hear how he would have met his end, eager to hear if the plans for him now have grown more or less elaborate - a delightfully sick matter of pride.

Hannibal shifts his weight just enough to feel the boy closer, pressed against his back. He fights down a slight smile that appears at the atrocities Will asks after, shocking questions that fall against Hannibal with remarkable comfort. A familiar territory, now shared, and he is distracted enough by his delight in the moment to turn back and gather a kiss from the corner of the boy’s lips.

“An extraordinarily difficult one, as it appears,” Hannibal answers ruefully, but this too eases into a fond reminiscence as he continues. “At the time, as now admittedly, you were breathtaking. Untouched, unmarred, a particular beauty whose preparation I anticipated moreso than most I have ever encountered.”

He returns to his work, mixing the tartare.

“The bitterness of your meat would have been drawn out by the cinnamon, an accent to the dried peppers, and so I turned a harsher hand. You seemed to enjoy it enough.”

Stretching, he pulls the crostini tray closer to plate, each with a perfectly sized dollop of tartare atop it.

“Your shoulders are wide, which would have served well for this, as the recipe calls for a shoulder roast. Rolled and tied, traditionally, but I intended to keep it in-bone for use of the marrow. You would have been above a charcoal fire, stoked for thirty minutes before cooking, atop a bed of the avocado leaves for which I so diligently sought. Roughly three hours, restoring the juices that drained from it, an endeavor on which I would have spent the better part of an afternoon.”

He sighs, brows knitting as he feels those same shoulders press against his back, skinny arms wrapping around him from behind.

“I was going to make tortillas for the occasion.”

Will grins and ducks his head between Hannibal’s shoulders.

Complex, time consuming. Something that would take significant effort and time. He makes a soft sound of pleasure and slides his hands further down Hannibal’s body to where they currently rest.

Down, past the apron where it sits immaculately tied and folded, down over his groin, not hard yet but defined, a shape Will knows intimately, enjoys in every way.

"Tortillas just for me?" Will asks, almost breathless with apparent surprise at the words, as though that, in particular, was what got him, not the deliberate stroking of his own ego as Will’s fingers now stroke over the front of Hannibal’s pants.

"How long will dinner be?" he purrs, rolling his hips against Hannibal’s, a deliberate goading.

“It is ready,” Hannibal responds, and in a moment of whimsy, he passes back the spoon to Will, should he care to lick it clean of another boy who also found his destiny suddenly altered. “The simple pleasure of tartare, Will, is that it does not require cooking at all. It is mixed with the capers, eggs, anchovies, and the emulsions, and served raw.”

He washes his hands, folds down his sleeves and buttons them again. A more casual affair, this particular dinner, little overture but for the thing itself. A glass of wine is poured for Will, and Hannibal brings the food to the table where places are already set.

Both settle, one beside the other, and Hannibal yields the first bite to Will, observing him only peripherally when he proceeds to serve himself in turn.

“I could still make tortillas for you,” Hannibal offers. “Shared in an entirely different context than originally intended, of course, but if you would enjoy them, then it is a recipe I would still greatly care to try.”

Will chews thoughtfully, lost for a moment in the contemplation of the boy’s final thoughts. Had he struggled when Hannibal had killed him? Had he simply allowed it to happen?

What lies had Hannibal filled his mind with? Had drowned his poor dull heart in?

He tastes no bitterness in the meat and rolls it over his tongue before swallowing, leaning to take another bite, the bread deliciously delicate against his tongue, with how the butter had soaked it, rendered it softer in the middle.

"You would make tortillas and forbid me nachos?" Will jokes, licking his lips and reaching for his wine. He still drinks quickly, and Hannibal still delights in encouraging it. Will amuses himself, on quieter mornings alone, really giving thought to how utterly depraved Hannibal’s tastes are with his toys.

He breaks off a piece of bread and places it between his teeth, watching Hannibal carefully with amused, narrowed eyes.

"Won't we need to procure a lamb?" he asks, a smile curling his lips.

Hannibal’s eyes close, a brief moment of extraordinary satisfaction as the sweetness of the tartare settles tenderly across his tongue. He remembers the boy’s arms looping around his neck, his kisses inexperienced and sloppy and agonizingly genuine as Hannibal promised him an education, a home, a life, and the boy responded by mouthing odes of worship against his skin. Forcing himself to moan through the rough fucking even as his breath hitched in his throat, thinking it was what Hannibal would want to hear. Asking if he could stay the night, in light of Hannibal’s words, and Hannibal’s warm assurance that he could, as hard fingers sank around his throat.

A sigh, blissful, and his eyes open again to meet Will’s, mischievous stormy blue.

“We would, indeed. Unless you are volunteering yourself again,” Hannibal finally replies, “although I quite like your shoulders where they are, for now.”

He takes another bite, and quietly congratulates himself on the compliment of wine that follows it.

“Perhaps, if you would assist me and there is barbacoa left after, you may use that on your,” a pause, mild exasperation, “nachos.”

Will laughs despite himself, unable to contain the image of Hannibal’s utter disgust at seeing his food go so blatantly to waste. The laugh lasts a while, innocent, warm, and he presses another pulled piece of butter-soaked bread between his lips before he finishes his wine.

"Perhaps if I assist you well you'll let me feed them to you," he counters, pleased and excited and feeling the adrenaline seep into his system. He takes another bite of dinner and savors it, eyes on the older man at his side, before he swallows and licks his lips - and fingers, to Hannibal’s disgust and pleasure - clean.

"May we hunt tomorrow?" he asks, adjusting his expression with the barest tilt of his head, widening of his eyes, in a way he knows gets Hannibal’s pupils widening in turn, his entire body wired to pay attention.

The inescapable temptation of youth, a reminder that what sits before him is his entirely.

Will reaches for Hannibal’s glass of wine, eyes on the doctor's before draining it slowly.

"Please?"

Hannibal’s fingers drum once against the table as his wine is taken from him, vanishing between the greedy lips of an eager boy who can never settle. Not with his grasping fingers or his hungry mouth, not with the bending of his body or the twists of his persona through myriad forms, somehow vastly older than his years and younger than them all at once.

An inconstant and shifting presence by which Hannibal now, as ever, finds himself fascinated.

The glass is pulled away from him with a sudden movement, too fast for Will to respond, and restored to its rightful place beside his plate. He watches Will, observes the way he brings his knee against the table and tilts back. Energy and movement, uncontrolled.

“We may,” Hannibal agrees, after a lengthy pause. “If we do, shall I procure our lamb, or would you do the honor?”

The mingling pronouns, tangling ever tighter, as this too bridges new ground. There is a note of wariness between them, undeniable, as Hannibal recalls the last time Will brushed anywhere near one of his hunts, and nearly left Hannibal with two dead boys rather than only one in the aftermath of shattered porcelain and unabated anger.

Will licks his lips gently. A careful motion to move his plate out of the way, then Hannibal’s, before hoisting himself on the table. He flexes his fingers against the hard wood, feels the corners of his lips tilt until he's grinning. 

One leg, then the other, over Hannibal's shoulders.

"Let me choose him," he murmurs.

There is a moment, held between them like this, wherein Hannibal is at peace. Eyes closed with eminent patience, breath slowed, and nothing to signal of anything less than serenity but for the twitch of tendon in his jaw, tightening once.

It’s the only warning before Hannibal stands so quickly as to send his chair flying, and snatches Will by his hair before it even hits the floor. The teasing, the impudence, the demands and now the defiance of crawling across his table during dinner… Hannibal pulls him hard off the mahogany and drops him to the floor, then rights him to his feet just as readily.

He forces the boy face down over the table, bending over Will in turn. The table edge presses painfully into the boy’s thighs and Hannibal does not heed his whining noises. As though there had been no interruption. As though Hannibal weren’t already furiously hard, grinding in slow strokes against Will’s ass, driving him against the table still set for dinner.

“Then it will be your choices that determine the success of it,” Hannibal agrees softly. “Choose well.”


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hannibal had asked for a lamb, and Will had brought him one.
> 
> Enough alike on the surface - torridly young for their shared occupation, aesthetically pleasing beyond most, and both observant and bright - but to Hannibal’s eyes they could not be more at odds. Sharpened fangs not yet bared to play soft against genuine gentleness. Practiced cleverness opposing sweet insecurity.
> 
> A wolf at play, with prey too innocent yet to even fathom its own danger.

It’s cold, and Will’s sweater isn’t cutting it anymore. Or perhaps he’s just used to better now, softer coats and heavier fabrics, hot hands and hotter mouths. He tilts his head and stamps his feet a few times to get feeling back into them.

He’s been meandering from corner to corner for a while now, but no one seems to be having much luck with business this evening. Few cars, fewer takers within, but Will waits, ignores the dirty looks he gets from taking over someone’s spot, from trying to steal the tricks… there are none to steal. He supposes the boys need something to gripe about to keep the boredom away.

Some he remembers, some remember him. This profession doesn’t offer much chance for friendships to form between those genuinely homeless and those seeking to make a few easy hundreds by spreading their legs and thinking of England.

Above Will’s head, the street light gives out with a click and he curses, eyes up.

“Shit that sucks.” A voice, a little older than him but not by much. “I spent hours guarding this damned corner and now this.”

Will turns, eyes wide and hands under his arms to keep them warm. The boy waves gently to reassure Will before stepping closer, squinting to try and see.

“Haven’t seen you around,” he points out. Will shrugs.

“I uh… I usually don’t -” he gestures, cheeks flushed and lips red before he bites the bottom one shyly.

“I have a regular. He’s been away for a few weeks but he said he would be back around today and I just… I was hoping…”

The boy snorts. Will hasn’t seen him around before either. Not a bad looking kid, light hair and light eyes, green maybe, but he can’t be sure. He’s slightly stronger of build than Will but not much taller. He wears a similar configuration of pitiful garments but doesn’t seem to feel the cold like Will does.

“Hope’s forsaken this street, kid - try Main.”

Will smiles and flicks the hair from his eyes.

“He’s nice to me. Keeps coming back. This isn’t Pretty Woman, I don’t expect much but…” He shrugs again. “A warm bed and dinner never goes wrong.”

“He feeds you?”

Will nods, ducks his head, another shy smile. The boy’s brows furrow and he swallows, running a hand through his hair, and for a moment Will sees a kid much like the one he’d been not two years ago - all false bravado and no actual experience. 

He’s perfect.

“He can be a bit rough but he never goes too far,” Will continues, shifting just enough to feel the scar against his thigh, feeling his cheeks flush from the sensation. “Have you been out here long?”

The kid snorts again, parts his lips to tell another lie and seems to change his mind, defeated. He sighs, instead.

“Just over a week,” he admits. “It’s been so damned quiet, I just… I thought this would be easy, you know? Bend over for some sick fuck with too much money to spend and be done with it. Bam, easy. But there’s a fucken drought or something I swear.”

Will shrugs, turns to step out onto the street, peering down the center line for any sign of cars.

“Sometimes it’s just not the time, man,” he says. The kid sighs again and brings his hands to his face to blow hot air against his fingers.

Will hesitates, walks over to press his own against the boy’s cold fingers. Neither say anything - there’s nothing to say. And for a moment they just stand there, in the dark, two kids keeping each other warm.

“I’m Jay,” the kid says finally, breath steaming in the cold air, and Will smiles.

“Will.” He rubs the boy’s hands a little longer before something catches his attention, a sense honed to the sound of a particular car engine, and Will grins and runs partially out onto the road again to look.

When a black Bentley pulls up, Will runs to it, the door opening for him, and crawls in, straight into the arms of an older man there, much older, who seems just as pleased to see Will as Will is to see him. Jay watches, brows furrowed in defeat, and sighs. But the car doesn’t pull away. Not even when the rather amorous reunion seems to have cooled enough for public viewing.

The shapes shift, and Will leans out the passenger door, grin on his face, cheeks flushed dark.

“Come with me,” he offers.

Jay hesitates, hand raised passively, the other tucked under his arm. “Nah, really, it’s okay -”

A laugh, to disperse the darkness as Will tilts himself further out of the car. “Come on. You’re not going to get anything out here tonight and it’s fucking cold.”

Reconsideration, as Jay glances up and down the blackened street, as he observes the patient look given from the older man to the younger.

“Fuck it,” he mutters with a sigh, catching a hint of Will’s grin just in the corner of his mouth and heading towards the car.

Dark eyes find him in the rearview as the car sets out. Heavy accent, warm against the older man’s voice.

“Hello, Jay.”

“This is Hannibal,” Will introduces, watching between them over the back of his seat. Another long look is given to Will, a curious sort of fondness read in it by the boy behind them. “I told him that you were kind of new - I hope that’s okay.”

A sigh, terse and teenage, and a shrug. “Yeah, it’s fine,” Jay responds, glancing towards the man driving them now, away from the hourly-rate motels and somewhere better. “Hi Hannibal,” he adds with a little smile, practiced, almost demure. It plays off Will’s youth like a duet and Hannibal considers him.

Choices made well, at least so far.

“A pleasure. I’m sorry you were left waiting,” Hannibal continues, to one or both of them, it isn’t clear. “I was held up, briefly, preparing for tomorrow’s work.” Will leans, dragging a kiss against Hannibal’s cheek that the older man leans into in kind, a gentle exchange watched with interest from the back seat.

Jay shifts, turns his attention out the window, and then blinks.

“Are these heated seats?”

Will laughs, gives him a knowing look over the back of the seat before settling back in the front.

For the duration of the drive, Jay loses focus on the two people in front, murmuring to each other in a language he doesn’t speak, and instead watches the rest of the city go by. From cheap areas you don’t want to be caught dead walking home alone in - perhaps because walking home alone there would render one dead - to more comfortable family neighbourhoods, and beyond those still to something far more elaborate, far richer.

Jay’s barely awake by the time the car pulls into the garage of a large two-story house, standalone, in a quiet street. He looks up when Will leans over the back of the seat and offers a tired smile.

“You okay?”

Jay offers a thin smile Will sees right through, and he gestures, gently, implying the boy should just relax, let this play out.

I was like you before, Will’s smile says, before he turns to look at Hannibal like the man had given him the moon. Just relax.

“Are you hungry, Jay?” Hannibal asks, eyes on him through the mirror, again, as the garage closes behind them. “Will seems to deliberately work up an appetite just before coming to see me.” The tone dips to something fond, like chastising a small child, and Will brings his thumb to his mouth to chew absently at the skin there, grinning, cheeks coloring.

Jay swallows.

“Nah, I - I could eat later.” In truth, he’s not hungry, too nervous with everything happening so quickly, too nervous with finally finding someone to take him for the night, worried if he’ll get paid for it since it’s Will’s trick, his regular. Worried that he won’t live up to expectations from whomever has expectations of him.

He doesn’t let his eyes linger on Hannibal’s, he can’t, the gaze is penetrating, it’s powerful. Jay feels shivers crawl up his spine and avoids giving them motion. Instead he smiles and looks away. From the front seat, the man murmurs his understanding, and - Jay notices - leans to open Will’s door for him before seeing himself out of the vehicle.

After a pause, Jay gets out to follow the two of them, catching Will’s arm to draw him back before they enter the house proper.

“Look,” he says, “I don’t want to steal your thunder here, but…”

Will smiles, “He won’t let you go without a fee, he’s not like that.”

Jay frowns and holds Will’s sleeve when he tries to walk away again.

“He won’t mind that I’ve -”

“Do you trust me?” Will asks him gently, eyes wide and blue on Jay’s - green was accurate, it turns out. “I’ve been with Hannibal a few months… he’s never cruel, he’s never unfair. If you just want to play with me, he’ll enjoy watching.”

Jay frowns before nodding. He relaxes his grip on Will’s sleeve and follows him when he leads them into the house, toes off his shoes as Will does, and watches with a strange smile he can’t seem to hide when Hannibal gathers Will to him and hoists him up to kiss, hands under the boy’s ass as Will wraps his legs around him - comfortable, familiar, utterly relaxed around each other.

Do you trust me?

He considers that he could.

Just for one night.

The embrace lingers a moment more, as Hannibal chases one of Will's teasing kisses with his teeth, a nip, playful. Will doesn't seem inclined to let go, burying his face adoring against Hannibal's neck. A hum from the older man, a quiet pleasure in their nearness that resonates further than a rent boy and his client.

Perhaps something, perhaps nothing, but Jay averts his attention from the intimacy of it and Hannibal catches the tug of anxiety as soon as it plucks through the air.

He meets the boy's eyes offers a brief smile from beneath Will's affections, a hint of tired amusement gathered in the corners of his eyes.

"Breathe, Jay."

There is no unkindness in his voice, and Jay draws a breath whether by impulse or instruction, and settles a faint smile in return.

"This is quite a house."

"Would it sound particularly average if I told you to make yourself comfortable?"

Hannibal's smile widens a little, just enough self-deprecation in it to hide the swell of pleasure at another boy here to praise him, his masks and his set pieces, all that he works so diligently with which to surround himself for moments such as these.

He lowers Will back to the ground despite the noise of protest, and Will's fingers seek out Jay's again. Warming them, as before.

"As a guest, the evening is whatever you would have it be," Hannibal offers genially. "Though as you will undoubtedly come to see, the direction tends to be decided by Will, more often than not."

A pause, good-humored as he adds. "Demanding boy."

Jay sighs, skimming his free hand back through his hair. There will be money, food if he wants it. Warmth for the worst of the night, and another boy here. Not alone in this place with the intense older man who works so hard to hide that edge in himself.

He wonders what Hannibal does for a living, but knows better than to ask.

"Do you want to play?" Will asks Jay, a gentle prompt. "Come on, I'll take you."

Fingers still laced, a security in the way he squeezes, dragging Jay lightly towards the stairs as Hannibal watches them go.

Will feels the other boy squeeze tight a moment longer before letting go of Will’s hand at the top of the stairs. Will isn’t put off, just leads Jay into the bedroom without contact instead.

"You've never done this before," Will notes, not unkindly, stretching his arms over his head with a groan before turning, his smile soft. "I know he seems intense, strict, but he's affectionate, gentle. He won't hurt you."

"But he'll hurt you?" Jay asks carefully. Will shrugs.

"If the mood strikes him." He doesn’t elaborate further, but he does step closer to the other boy, strokes cool fingers over his cheek, curls them under his jaw.

"Do you just want to try with me?" he asks, waits for the inevitable, welcome nod, before allowing his smile to reach his eyes. He lets his hand linger a moment more before leaning in to bring warm lips to Jay's cold ones, chaste, letting the boy move faster on his own.

It's incredibly empowering. Will rarely works with anyone less than twenty years his senior, but Jay is fascinating. Unusual and interesting, in appearance at least, and when he finally parts his lips with a sigh, Will grins against him, moans softly and kisses back.

Hannibal’s feet, socks against carpet, fall silent against the stairs and he listens. Catches the moan, entirely genuine, from his boy who feels all pleasure so sincerely. Hears the soft movements of mouths meeting, hands across fabric, across skin, the shuffle of feet as one draws nearer to the other. He does not interrupt yet, merely listens to Will at work.

“See?” Will laughs, the lengths of their bodies sinking easily together, playfully looping his arms over Jay’s shoulders. “You think I would’ve waited around out there if I didn’t know it would be worth it?”

This is easier, less pressure to perform, guidance in the form of Will’s words, his touch. Jay feels himself relaxing, a little, though his attention still darts to the bedroom they’re in, expansive and expensive, spacious and pristinely clean. A far cry from the last place he went on a night like this, a shitty studio apartment with little more than a mattress on the floor and a few sheets twisted across it. The guy had tried to short him, too, and Jay had felt his palms get clammy, voice rising high as he refused to leave until the rest of his fee was paid.

“Hey,” Will grins against his ear. “Come back to me.”

A blink, and a small but earnest smile in response as Jay focuses back on the other boy, finally pressing his hands below his shirt to feel his skin, warm and unscarred. He seems well cared for compared to most of the boys Jay’s met, the closeness between him and his regular obvious.

He gives, following Will’s insistent tug to the bed and watching as he splays himself across it as though it were his own.

“Should I take my clothes off now, or…”

“If you want,” Will agrees, rolling onto his stomach with his cheek against his arms, himself still clad only in a shirt and pants, barefoot.

Comfortable. At home.

It's clear the boy has not been working the streets long, though he had lied about only being out there a week. It's been longer for him, that or he has been hungry longer still before seeing this as a viable option.

Will bites his lip as he watches the boy undress. He’s clean, nervous, but his eyes linger on Will in a way he can’t mistake. The want for Will is as obvious as the want for Will's life here, and the younger boy bites his lip, pleased, before rolling over onto his back and arching up off the bed.

"Take mine off, too." he suggests, smiling when Jay climbs up onto the bed with him, leans in to start on the buttons of Will’s shirt as the other lies pliant and still and lets him. He glances up only once, when Hannibal enters the room, and feels his cheeks darken with the anticipation of it. He catches Jay's hand when he starts to pull away, worried he's breaking some unspoken rules here.

"Stay," Will murmurs, biting his lip a little harder before releasing it. "Play with me."

Jay hesitates, swallows, watching the mostly bare body beneath him shiver and twist in invitation. Then he leans in to kiss Will again, down to his jaw and his neck as he sighs and splays himself wide for the attention, enjoying the hot gaze of his mentor much more than the gentle touches of the other boy.

Hannibal had asked for a lamb, and Will had brought him one.

Enough alike on the surface - torridly young for their shared occupation, aesthetically pleasing beyond most, and both observant and bright - but to Hannibal’s eyes they could not be more at odds. Sharpened fangs not yet bared to play soft against genuine gentleness. Practiced cleverness opposing sweet insecurity.

A wolf at play, with prey too innocent yet to even fathom its own danger.

Will arches as if on cue, rolling his eyes closed with a moan to turn from watching Hannibal’s steady approach. His pants are slid free as he rises, tossed aside, and Jay reaches to brush a hand through Will’s hair, glancing past where he kisses Will’s shoulder, his neck, up against his ear to watch Hannibal.

“Please, don’t let me interrupt,” Hannibal insists gently to the boy, resuming his steady undressing as though he were there alone.

Will’s insistent little sounds are enough to pull Jay’s attention back to him, legs twining and hips rocking to rub gently, languidly against the other. Breaking into a grin, Will’s hands splay, fingers stretching catlike, down Jay’s smooth skin, bringing their skinny bodies together and nuzzling into another slow kiss.

“See,” Will purrs when they part. “It’s not so bad.”

A hum of pleased agreement but no words, and Jay moves to kiss lower down Will’s body again, tucking his hands under Will’s back to make him arch as he sucks a nipple, tugs it with his teeth and Will keens.

He’s lost in it, in the younger body writhing so willingly for him, that he doesn't notice Hannibal is closer until Will’s soft pleading cries are cut off by a deep kiss and a low hum of pleasure from the older man. 

It's a strange dynamic, both of them hungry for Will between them, and Jay’s confidence rises more, to spread Will wider, a delicious, obscene presentation for Hannibal when he looks up, one hand down to stroke Will’s cock to a beautiful deep pink of arousal.

When Hannibal slides a hand through Jay’s hair in appreciation, the boy turns into it, parts his lips and allows the kiss when Hannibal leans for one. He continues stroking Will’s cock, until the pleas grow higher, the shudders palpable, and Hannibal smiles as he pulls away.

Even their years combined are fewer still than Hannibal’s, a thought which delights him irredeemably as the boy’s arch and join in another kiss, mouths open, gasping, tongues twining together as do their bodies, lithe and sinuous.

A broad hand presses between them to peel Jay back onto his knees. Hannibal spreads his hand along the boy’s hairless chest, over perked nipples, down further still to his stomach, a little drawn, a little concave. Jay makes a soft sound, held back, restrained unlike the unabashed whimpering and keening of Will beneath him as Jay strokes him slowly. Hannibal draws a kiss gently over Jay’s shoulder, in particular.

Dark eyes focused on Will, watching him squirm, Hannibal tastes this new boy, mouth and tongue and teeth grazing softly against unfamiliar skin. Untarnished and sweet, hungry and a little desperate, and now heady with arousal, a warmth against Hannibal’s tongue that draws a sigh from him.

It is no wonder that he chooses, for these particular purposes, such beautiful boys, and it’s always affirmed when he has the opportunity to enjoy one such as this.

His hand drifts lower, to grasp Jay’s hardening cock and feel the swell of it, the flush of heat pulsing beneath his fingers as he tugs softly.

Will watches, through the haze of his own arousal he watches as Jay starts to succumb to the older man's charm, to his clever hands and demanding mouth. When Jay lets him go, finally, too distracted by Hannibal's attention, Will scrambles back and kneels, and leans close again to set his mouth against the inside of Jay’s thigh, spreading him, now, as he had been spread.

"Will, fuck -"

Will grins, eyes quickly flicking up to Hannibal, amusement curling in his gaze as the older man silently implies that every curse will be Will’s debt to pay, later.

He shivers in pleasure at the thought and leans closer still to kiss Hannibal's knuckles as he continues to stroke, feels them uncurl to caress Will’s cheek before guiding him to take Jay’s cock into his mouth.

The wolves surround him now, not only in fore and rear but with hands, with mouths and teeth, with hungry breaths timed in tandem pressed eager to Jay’s skin. Hannibal’s free hand slides higher, to catch Jay’s chin and bring their mouths together in a warm kiss.

“Beautiful,” Hannibal murmurs softly, thumb stroking the curve of Jay’s throat to bring his head to rest against Hannibal’s shoulder. Jay reaches up behind him, palm soft against Hannibal’s cheek. Hannibal meets it in kiss but then stills - a curious pause and quiet delight.

“You paint.”

Lips parted, breathless, Jay turns his attention up from Will’s eager mouth and blinks at Hannibal.

“Yeah. How did you -”

Hannibal curls his fingers through the boy’s hair, pleased when his eyes flutter closed with another groan.

“Your fingers smell of turpentine.” He brings Jay’s fingers across his lips again. Chasing the taste of thinner, the remnants of oils beneath, Hannibal imagines for a moment that he can taste the colors themselves - cadmium yellow and Prussian blue, viridium green and oxide red.

“Would that I could see them sometime,” adds Hannibal, almost absently, before curling his fingers beneath Will’s jaw to guide him back, to pace him, to pull another long, low curse from Jay and bring him arching back against Hannibal.

Hannibal could not have asked for more, he considers with unbounded pleasure, reaching for the lube to slick his fingers and drag them back between the boy’s legs. New movements, twitches and shudders and sounds yet unfamiliar, and Hannibal drinks up each and every one as he rubs slow circles against him.

Will sits back, knees folded beneath him but thighs spread wide anyway, panting to catch his breath as he eyes Hannibal carefully. The delight at the boy’s talent is entirely genuine and it tugs at something within him.

Will has never been creatively talented. His strength lies in his mind.

You cannot look within a mind as you can on a painting. Will swallows and leans in again to kiss Hannibal softly, sets a hand to rub over Jay's nipple to draw more needy noises from him. Hannibal allows the kiss, and offers a soft nuzzle before turning back to the boy in his arms.

"What do you see," Hannibal asks, relishing the shudder that shakes the boy as he presses a finger into him. “What drives those colors from behind your eyes?"

Will’s jaw tenses, but he says nothing as he leans to suck a mark against Jay’s throat.

Hannibal sinks an arm around Jay’s shoulders to bring the boy back against his chest, to feel his spine arch, following the curl of his moan when Hannibal bends his finger just so.

“It’s not,” Jay begins, with a self-effacing laugh as his words hitch on a breath. “It’s not what I see.”

A curious hum, Hannibal’s mouth drawing against the pulse of his throat, the vibrations of his words, watching Will from across the graceful arch of Jay’s neck as his boy’s teeth drag sharp, draw a flinch, a gasp.

“Tell me,” Hannibal insists gently, earnest curiosity, and another trembling shiver as he works in a second finger.

“It’s what I don’t see - sensations, feelings,” Jay gasps, hand sliding to grasp his cock, stroking slowly in time with the movement of the two bodies pressed against his. “The right color or - fuck - or movement to express them.”

Hannibal can think of little else in the world that would make a moment sweeter for him than this. The ineloquence of youth stammered earnest and passionate, the relentless drive to create whether through sex or art - or murder, in the case of the blue-eyed boy ardently seeking Hannibal’s mouth by bending Jay back between them with a rough curl of fingers.

He returns the kiss and parts it on a sigh, watching as Jay engages them both, moves to steal Will’s mouth from Hannibal, flushed lips meeting eagerly.

Drawing his mouth again across Jay’s fingers, Hannibal imagines. Sees the boy profaning himself with this profession to pay his way to art school, the subject of great attention, a prodigy perhaps, far beyond his years. Pulling from these sordid experiences to add a gritty nuance to his images, attracting acclaim as his skill grows. Thinking back perhaps on moments such as this as formative, a necessary step in his evolution to flourish and bring the color from behind his eyes into the world for others to share.

All ended. Tonight.

No more paintings drawn from the gentle fingers that press against Hannibal’s mouth, no college classes and no critical acclaim. Striking green eyes that seek to interpret and represent the world through their own perception growing suddenly and irrevocably dark.

A bloom snapped from its branch before it can ever hope to unfurl its colors.

“What do you see now, in this?” Hannibal asks him, praise fed not for the work itself but for the idea of it, to hear, to know what he seeks to consume from this particular boy still twisting himself on Hannibal’s driving fingers.

"Fuck, I don't... I... shit...I'm gonna -"

Will takes his hand as he had before and stills it against Jay’s cock, tightens their joined grip.   
"Hold still, Jay, just hold on," he sighs, parts his lips to kiss him again, to bring Jay’s hand to Will’s cock instead as though to share the sweet pleasure-pain of endurance. Will doesn't think of how Hannibal has yet to touch him.

Hannibal hums, turns his face into the boy’s hair to breathe him in, to bury his face in the warm strands as he does so often with Will.

"It's like... breath. I see breath," Jay manages weakly, moaning and jerking when Hannibal’s fingers find his prostate and stroke it mercilessly. "Oh god - blues, greys, soft, soft like wings like - like -"

Will murmurs something, a language Hannibal is fairly sure is dead, but his tone is unmistakable, the envy radiates off of him like a smell, spicy and bitter mixing with the sweet aroma of the other boy's arousal.

"Like smoke," Will offers, in English, moaning as Jay’s fingers twist him harder, as Hannibal finally turns his attention to him. "From a cigarette shared."

Jay’s attention to turns to Will, eyes opening enough to see him, a breathless smile, a little laugh at the connection he assumes is there.

“Yeah,” he agrees, grinning as he leans in to kiss the other boy, hand pressed to Will’s cheek.

Hannibal is grateful for the kiss, as it affords enough of a distraction that the slip of expression towards Will - a sudden darkening, eyes narrowed - goes unseen. Less caused by his words, though, and more the tone behind them.

Jealous. Impudent. _Spoiled._

He feels his own irritation flare in response and does not fight it, but merely redirects the energies. Withdrawing his fingers, Jay gasps, and Hannibal snares him by the waist, an affectionate gesture, somehow more intimate than when he was curling fingers inside him. Leaning over him now, bending him towards the bed, mouth warm against his shoulder as Hannibal slicks himself, hard despite the sudden distraction of unwelcome emotions radiating at him, begging for his attention away from his prey, his hunt, cooling the fire in his veins.

Hannibal forces it to stir again, murmuring softly against Jay’s shoulder.

“It would be a delight to see it, this moment wrought in oil and canvas,” he intones, pleased by the thought, and moreso by the fact that such a thing will never come to be. “I often seek out particular talents, and it brings me great satisfaction to experience their transformation.” A pause, lining himself up against Jay, and glancing towards Will, who watches balefully in return, to see if he will choose to involve himself in a more favorable manner.

“Will can tell you,” Hannibal suggests, in such a way that he in fact suggests that Will do anything but. “How much pleasure it brings me to offer my patronage to those who deserve it.”

Will’s jaw works and he strokes his fingers through Jay’s hair, the boy pressing himself to Will’s thighs with short breaths as Hannibal spreads him wider, lining up. Will tugs his hair, considers, smiles when his lips part over his thighs.

"Hannibal is a man of pleasure," Will murmurs, shifting to spread his legs around Jay, not an implication for the boy to suck so much as to press closer, another intimate invitation.

"A man of expensive tastes,” he continues. “So well-spoken, educated, a man evolved to make good decisions on talent and the honing of it." He makes a soft pleasurable sound as Hannibal enters the boy and Jay cries out in pain from it. He strokes his hair again, hushes him.

"Tell him more of your paintings, more of the smoke," Will looks up at Hannibal now, meets his eyes with a thin fake smile. "He may press that smoke smoldering into your skin to mark a false promise."

He turns Jay closer, until the boy’s lips brush the scar, raised and still sensitive, and quite obvious in light of Will’s words. Between them, Jay stills, suddenly tense, looks up at Will. 

A beat, a breath of silence, motionless.

Hannibal’s eyes narrow, a bare shifting of muscle in his expression.

“If it is false, Will, then it is only because you have decided it is so.”

A sudden movement, as Hannibal realizes the little artist is still impaled beneath him and Jay shifts, squirming to slide free of Hannibal, his hands, free of the boy in front of him baring his scar.

“Please,” Jay begs, a high sound so much younger in its fear than the moans, the art, the laugh against Will’s mouth. “I don’t - look, I’m sorry. Can I please go?”

Hannibal’s jaw sets, a flicker of motion as it does, attention settled unrelenting on Will and Will alone. A black gaze - dark as the skin that burned beneath the cigarette they shared, dark as the lightless basement that waits for Will now.

He releases his hands from Jay’s hips, lets him scramble to his feet, and rises from the bed to hand the boy his shirt, tossed carelessly aside. Thoughtful and polite, even still.

Jay hesitates, swallows hard, unsure of what exactly he’s so afraid of but driven by adrenaline, metallic and sharp, driven to quietly flee from whatever shift in the air has just transpired.

Hannibal catches his wrist when he goes to take the shirt, and spins the boy back against him. He’s stronger than Will, but held easily in place, and Hannibal brings a hand to settle beneath his chin, the other stroking warmly through his hair.

“Please,” Jay begs now, a sudden collapse loosening his body, held in place by Hannibal. Tears, a torrent, slick against his cheeks. “Please don’t hurt me. I’m sorry - I -”

Hannibal pulls him nearer. Ignoring Will now, ignoring anyone but the little lamb struggling, sobbing against him. He is firm in holding him in place, but there is an unmistakable tenderness to it, bearing the weight of the frightened boy who shakes in his arms. An artist who may have been known, now unknown. A light that might have burned bright, now extinguished.

Added to a collection of boys who may have been, but never were.

“I will not hurt you,” Hannibal assures him softly, and before the boy can draw a breath again, he twists.

The snap of his spine sounds like a branch cracking, cartilage separating from between vertebrae with a sickening wetness, a crunch. The little artist jerks once, and Hannibal does not let him fall, but lays him against the ground.

Something like loss. Mourning, for the hunt cut so unexpectedly short. For the boy whose pleasure in life he may have granted one more time if not for the one staring wide-eyed from the bed. Hannibal’s fingers flex, attention held on the body at his feet, and he waits.

Will’s lungs burn with a held breath, eyes on the boy dead at Hannibal's feet now, unexpected, so fast, so utterly indifferent. He swallows, lets out a breath, and it snaps Hannibal’s attention back to him.

"Shit." Tongue quick, red against his lips before Will slips from the bed and bolts.

The nearest door he reaches is the bathroom, turns the lock, and presses his back to it as two hands impact on either side of his head, shuddering through him even through the expensive wood.

"Shit, shit."

Too quick, it had happened too quick he hadn’t meant for that, not then, not like this. He'd just wanted Hannibal to see him again, around the beautiful artist, around his own desire for him, he wanted Hannibal to look at him again, touch him, bring them close...

Another strike to the door that shakes it in its hinges and Will presses the heels of his hands into his eyes.

He'd looked at him in such a way, so excited by the talent, so fascinated by the boy, his words, his innocence...

Another strike and Will makes a frightened noise.

Perhaps he should not have run.

More than hands against the wood now, the entire weight of the man driven behind it, enough to jolt Will from the door. He slings himself right back against it, as though he is enough to stop it from coming down.

There is silence, for long moments, too long, long enough that the beating of Will’s heart and the rush of blood in his ears fills it, deafening.

Fists, against the door on either side of where Will startles at the sound with a cry, and a low voice pressed against the wood, separated by mere inches.

“If I have to tear this door down, Will, you will pay for it with your life.”

The threat is far from empty, dire in its darkness, in Hannibal’s ravening need for blood, for death, to hunt and to kill, needs now left unmet - brought to the surface, tempted, and left wanting.

The satisfaction of his hungers, interrupted by the insolent and greedy boy who slides to the ground behind the door.

“You have made your choice then.”

The voice fades, for Hannibal to take another running leap against the door that separates them.

Will shakes, feels his heart hammer as one leap is followed by another and he can't, anymore, terrified of Hannibal’s intent, as he had been in the basement, as he had been on the stairs.

He waits for the third shuddering of the door and scrambles up to open it, pressing himself to the wall perpendicular to it. He keeps his eyes closed, jaw working in fear.

"Sorry, I'm sorry, I -"

The word is foul on Hannibal’s ears, the begging, pleading apology he’s heard so many times already. A falsehood, as much as the ones they spoke to the boy lying dead on his floor, an insincerity driven by need. Will’s need to survive the only thing that seems to motivate him to ever feel regret for his actions.

Hannibal has him by the hair before Will can finish his plea, dragging him by it across the floor, past the boy who no longer sees colors behind eyes that now stare glassy and unseeing towards the ceiling.

“Is this what you envy, Will?” Hannibal snarls as they stop beside Jay, laid lifeless. He does not allow Will to answer, a savage jerk of his arm to rip another cry from the boy. “You ache for what I give to them. You feel unworthy without it, left to live while I visit death upon them.”

His teeth are gritted, lips curled, a roiling hot rage that sings to him to rip the boy to pieces. To tear his scar from his flesh with his teeth, rip open his throat where once he placed kisses, to let him feel what he so desires made as raw and unrestrained as he would have it.

Through the bedroom, towards the stairs.

Will struggles, one hand curled around Hannibal’s arm, the other seeking out for something to grab and finding nothing.

"I ache for how you see them," he whines, "when I'm right there and you don't see me."

He makes a pained sound and tries to curl up as he’s unceremoniously pulled down the stairs, turns to his side to avoid damage to his spine. At the bottom he's panting in pain, too scared to unfurl, as Hannibal bends to push him to standing.

Will trembles, unstable, and seeks out to touch the man, to sink to his knees and make him believe he's sorry, that he hadn't meant the night to fail so spectacularly.

"You didn't see me," he repeats, teeth gritted, eyes wide. Selfish. Young, stupid in his demands.

Hannibal’s eyes sharpen, incremental, enough to convey the disbelief that shakes him that perhaps this - all of this, whatever it is - has been a profound misjudgment.

“What would you hear from me? My words are not enough,” Hannibal breathes, and there is no kindness in it. “Insufficient to ever convince you that you are all I see. My promises are false, my touch is untrue, my heart wanders restless and unsatisfied. That is what you see, Will, and that is what you will have.”

Will is pulled, Hannibal’s fingers digging curves of flesh, blood beneath his nails as he snares Will by the throat to drag him further still.

Furious at his own missteps, his own trust placed blindly in this, of all things - a seventeen year-old boy. A disruptor of his home and of his life and now the one part of it all that he was foolish enough to think he could finally, after so long, share with another.

He ignores the strangled choke of protest, and continues to the basement, where this will end.


	18. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He should not care, he tells himself. The boy should not be alive and it should be no matter to make it so. The mere implication that Hannibal’s life would be disrupted in the fundamental ways in which this child has lashed out would have been enough to see anyone who so threatened it be killed without hesitation.
> 
> And yet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning for this chapter: flogging and feels

Will sits silent where he's thrown to the basement floor, doesn't struggle, doesn't cry out or try to beg Hannibal again. It would be futile, and the wrath radiating from the man is palpable. He stares, he watches, trembles but stays silent.

He plays the words through his mind, almost echoing there, searing, painful. He knows they're true, knows his irrational envy will kill him, by Hannibal's own hand. Now, perhaps.

He swallows.

"I don’t -" he presses his knuckles to his mouth. "I can't stop." He breathes, eyes up, pleading. _I want to, teach me, please…_

“Then you are a liability,” Hannibal hisses as he passes by the boy, voice sharpened to a razor’s edge. “There is no place in this world for one to whom I have given so much, and who will cost me everything with his lack of control.”

A drawer opens and is slammed shut. Rough jute, gathered between Hannibal’s fists, pulled tight.

“Stand.”

It is an order that Will does not disobey, dragging himself to his feet, eyes focused on the rope and heart racing as Hannibal approaches him with it.

“Bend. Over the table’s edge, face down.”

Will swallows, hard, and moves in unsteady steps to the autopsy table, shining silver beneath the hot halogens overhead. Where boys like him lay when Hannibal decides they have exhausted their purpose in life, to yield more in death and feed the monster now looming like death itself behind him.

His breath hitches, arms drawing against his chest as he lays across it, immediately corrected by a snap of the rope across the back of his knees.

“Arms out.”

Will knows better now than to beg, knows it will earn him little more than the fury already as scalding as the sulfurous light overhead. Slowly, he extends his arms, and Hannibal makes short work of tying his wrists together beneath the table. Knots pulled tight, wrists to wrists, ankles to ankles, each in turn to hold him bent, bowed, cheek and chest pressed bare to the table, high on his toes to not give him respite in leaning, arms stretched over edges that press sharply into his skin.

Without another word, Hannibal turns to leave, and the basement door shuts behind him.

Will winces at the sound, wonders if he’ll be left here to freeze overnight again, as he had once suffered beneath one of the hooks nearby. But even then he had been on the ground, able to curl and hold himself warm. Here, he can feel heat already seeped from his skin by the unyielding metal beneath him.

He flexes his fingers, considers Hannibal’s words. Liability. Lack of control. He knows they're not untrue, and both cut him and his pride enough to have Will pressing his forehead to the table in shame.

Could he truly not control his envy? When he knew that the affection was false saccharine that blood would melt within hours? When he knew that before him, and after him certainly, Hannibal would continue his practices unadjusted?

He thinks back to the night he had taken Hannibal with him to the club, the anger and jealousy he had felt radiating off of him in the car, in the house, as the other man had touched him and Hannibal had encouraged it. Not for any want to see Will debauched by another but because it was Will's method, his practice, his kill.

He jerks hard when the door is opened again.

There is silence, as Hannibal finds his way back to Will. Unhurried steps, his snarling, panting breaths now stabilized. Terrifying patience, as he studies the boy prone before him, watches the panic rise and fall in time with his breathing.

“I should cut that mark from your thigh,” Hannibal intones, and beneath his words, undertow to the anger still tight in his throat, is a hurt, profound, for what will certainly be lost with this evening if Will does not learn.

Mourning, again, the misplaced potential of it all.

“This was to be an atonement, Will,” reminds Hannibal, softly, “for the last time you let your envy control you. I allowed - and I did not have to - for you to join me in this. For you to see how I work. You asked me, and I accepted.”

A crack, heard before it’s felt, of leather breaking hard against Will’s ass.

The cry that escapes the boy, surprised and pained, echoes in the space. Then panting, heavy breaths and Will twists his wrists and shivers. He'd been acquainted with the belt not three weeks before. He doubts the meeting now will yield as pleasurable results as then.

"I..." He has nothing to say to him, ashamed and scared, tied down to a table in the basement where dozens of boys like him have died.

"I can do better."

“When?” Hannibal asks, teeth clenched for a moment before he stretches his neck, turns his head, and brings the belt down again. “How many times should I extend my trust to you in hopes that perhaps this time, unlike all the others before it, you will control yourself?”

Voice lowering, softer, amidst the quiet hum of freezers.

“Why should I bother, when my words, my home, my heart, my hands mean so little to you that you would call them false? When you would look me in the eye and call me a liar?”

The belt comes down again, harder than before, leaving a strip of red welted in in its wake.

“What will it cost me, Will, to continue to try?”

Will wails, entirely genuine in his pain, and rubs his forehead against the cold table.

"I've never... I don't -" Another welt, layered over those already marking Will red, and he shudders. "I've never had anyone to trust before!"

His voice echoes for a moment, swallowed by the sound of the freezers, the slow deliberate breathing of Hannibal behind him. Then the leather turns, creaks between cruel practiced hands and Will's yell fills the space instead.

"Let me... let me keep the mark, please don't take that... please don't -"

Harsh fingers curl in Will’s hair, pull him into a slow bend to hear his pleading ring echoing from the table’s surface.

“Made in false promise,” Hannibal reminds him. “It was not false when I made it, Will, but perhaps I misjudged your intention in it. Something to lord over me, in submission to you. To bend me and my life to suit your whims.”

He releases him, lets his cheek settle back against the cold surface.

“As though I have not already.”

Hannibal’s tongue parts his lips, allowing the silence to settle in to them, the marks to breathe in Will’s skin with every shift of movement.

A boy, laid bare, fearful and panicked.

A boy, given chances again and again, who could cost Hannibal everything.

“You would take this from me, then. My life,” Hannibal snarls softly, belt twisting around his fist. “My freedom.”

“No,” Will trembles, raises his head on his own, “No, Hannibal, I -”

A series of strikes, one after the other, biting sharp in their cruelty, no restraint - as little of it as Hannibal had shown last time - felt here, and Will sobs.

“I would not exist if you went away, I don’t know how.” He drags in a breath, another, closes his eyes against the table and grits his teeth, soft sobs, for now, escaping him into the cold room, his body tense, every muscle pulled harsh and tight and unrelenting, a flight he can’t achieve and a fight he’s fighting down.

His body doesn’t know what to do.

The tears, so often desired, earn him nothing.

“The solution is not that _I_ would go away,” Hannibal reminds him, the sentence left unfinished, clear enough in its implication.

A firm hand, clinical, presses against the welts raising hot along the curve of Will’s ass, a trickle of blood from broken skin. Hannibal traces a thumb across it, tastes it, unseen, and withdraws his touch again.

Hannibal leans against the wall, an uncharacteristic slump, hand rubbing against his face, back through his hair, before his eyes return to the boy’s heaving sides, curling toes, rising tremors shaking against the unyielding table.

“It is only you, ever, with whom I have shared this,” Hannibal finally intones. “Of all the little would-be doctors, musicians, artists,” he adds, pointedly, “all pale in compare to what I thought that we shared. What made you so unlike them. My mistake, perhaps.”

He pushes from the wall, feet padding soft, bare, against the cold floor.

“I have shared in your hunt, but you will not share in mine. You will resist mine, fight them if you are there or absent, it matters not. Break my belongings, lay ruin to my routines, and destroy any enjoyment I receive from such things, while you insist on continuing, unabated.”

The leather strokes cool, lower now, against Will’s thighs yet untouched.

“Tell me,” Hannibal asks, “how must I feel in seeing you come home flushed, bruised by the hands and mouths of others? Knowing they - undeserving - have touched you, heard your gentle pleas, pressed and stained themselves inside of you? No matter how they end, knowing as you come to me and press your mouth against mine and I taste them on you, knowing that this was their last experience in this world. To delight in you as I do, and yet for me to be the one tasked with scrubbing them from your skin.”

Will heaves another gentle sob and shakes violently, feeling the leather against undamaged skin. He shakes harder at the words.

“Like acid fills your lungs,” he says softly. “Anger with no outlet - they’re already dead, so you punish me.” He whimpers gently and forces his muscles to relax. “You don’t… punish me, you reclaim me… you want me…”

Hot tears make new tracks down his face, from shame, from pain, from the sudden agonizing need to have the man hold him, and knowing he doesn’t deserve it.

“How do you control it?” he whispers, fingers curling hard in the rope, knowing what’s coming, knowing he can’t escape it and forcing himself still, even restrained as he is, as he had when Hannibal had pressed that mark into his skin.

He can easily imagine the tension in Hannibal’s chest, the nausea that crawls up his throat, the mental images that don’t go away. He wonders what it’s like to smell that off of him, what it’s like to know that someone else had enjoyed Will, this broken toy that Hannibal can’t bring himself to toss aside.

Will swallows and arches his back, acceptance of more punishment.

“I trust,” Hannibal replies quietly. “I trust that no matter what other bed you fall into, you will return to mine when you are finished. I trust that their hands do not please you the way that mine do. I trust that you are a part of this, with me, and I trusted that you are not a conflict to be resolved.”

He pauses, swallows hard.

“I trust that no other words matter so much as the ones I share with only you.”

His fist tightens, and he brings the belt down hard across the back of Will’s pale thighs.

Catharsis, for a hunt spoiled.

Catharsis, for the boy’s cruelty.

Catharsis, for the hurt sharp as blades between Hannibal’s ribs that he has so rarely ever felt before.

“Words that you tell me now are false. After I extend to you my life, my manner of procurement, so that you can see.”

Another strike, the weight of his shoulders dropping behind it.

“So that you, then, will _trust_ ”

Will is crying in earnest now, loud, helpless, childish sobs at the truth fed him that drowns him in his shame.

_Selfish, cruel, incorrigible boy._

Trust. Given him by someone who does not trust, someone whose entire world is built on the opposite of trust. Trust given by a man who cultivates deceit, who gets off on feeding soft lies to softer mouths.

Trust that he had given a boy who had survived him thrice and had never once tried to end him since.

Will isn’t sure when the blows stop, doesn’t know how long he’s been tied down - the table no longer feels cold, his entire body throbs with heat and utter agony. His thighs are numb with pain yet somehow still burn with it, pain that swells with every harsh inhale and every short inhale.

Will doesn’t realize he’s hyperventilating until a warm hand settles in his hair and turns his head so he’s breathing cool air and not his own panicked exhalations. He feels black in the corners of his vision before Hannibal’s soft words to _slow down_ , and _breathe deep_ and _listen to my voice_ penetrate the buzzing in Will’s head.

He doesn’t laugh, here, not here. He shakes, adrenaline coursing through his system, body responding the same way he does in a fight and he has nowhere to burn it. His breathing eases, as Hannibal commands it to, but he doesn’t stop crying, he doesn’t stop pulling in deep breaths that expand his lungs against the table and remind him he’s alive.

Again.

Still.

A life he is trusted with, now, not one that is his own.

“I trust you,” he moans.

The boy is bleeding where the belt broke across him, and does not twitch in response to the bead of scarlet that trails down pale skin. Numbed by his body’s attempts to protect itself from the pain being inflicted on it. A familiar sensation to the one Hannibal now feels, turned inward, however, rather than out.

He loosens the belt from his hand and stretches his fingers, watching the color return to them.

“So you say,” Hannibal finally acknowledges, and he pulls aside a stool to sit beside the boy grown cold with shock, even as he sweats and keens as though his body is burning hot.

“I have given as much as I know how,” says Hannibal softly. “All that I understand how to give another. I will not give you this, Will. Not now, or ever, as I would not expect you to yield yours to me.”

An insurmountable impasse, to expect one to change this aspect of themselves so drastically for the other, and yet for all the knowing of its impossibility, Hannibal sighs at the pull of tension that snares within him. He should not care, he tells himself. The boy should not be alive and it should be no matter to make it so. The mere implication that Hannibal’s life would be disrupted in the fundamental ways in which this child has lashed out would have been enough to see anyone who so threatened it be killed without hesitation.

And yet.

Hannibal’s fingers spread, stroking again through the sweat-soaked curls. Just as lost as the boy in these unfamiliar waters, as undefined in destination. Hannibal swallows, hard, a clicking in his throat, as he asks, “So tell me, then - what’s to be done about that?”

Will doesn’t reply, not with words. He tries to take a quick mental tally of his injuries and loses track fairly quickly in keeping everything steady. His wrists are raw where he had tried to struggle free, despite his own desire to take this like it was earned. He flexes his fingers now, just to see them move, to know he can still move them.

"I asked," he starts, voice hoarse, "to see you work once, just once. I will not ask to again." He won't be able to prove himself with another test, and he refuses to lose the man’s trust further by begging for more chances.

"The next time I join you on a hunt, on your hunt, will be by your request alone, not by my word."

An earning. Trust that one day, Hannibal would ask him, and it will be within his power to refuse or accept, and that he would have the strength, then, to know.

“There will not be another chance. It is done,” Hannibal informs him, standing abruptly, wholly unmoved by the promises that feel so entirely selfish, so empty of atonement.

His hand tightens, snarling sharp in the boy’s curls, and he bends him back. Sees his neck curve, hears the whimper that falls against the table that holds the memories of so many boys just like him.

“I have tried to keep my murders as my own,” Hannibal reminds the boy. “That, too, cost me. Priceless porcelain destroyed in your blind fury and jealousy, and that even after cleaning up after myself. Leaving no traces to disturb you. No more left behind than my own openness in refusing to lie to you about it.”

He jerks the boy’s head and releases him, pacing away, fingers flexing, attention dropping to the belt on the floor.

“Nothing pleases you. Your hunger so far exceeds even my own that you would seek to devour from me what you once seemed to -,” Hannibal stops, the word unspoken but drawing a curl of lip from him, tone darkening, aching.

“I see precious few solutions, Will, that would make this sustainable.”

Will doesn't argue that, sets his forehead to the table and shakes from the pain and cold. His breath hitches when he speaks again.

"I have learned where to strike," he says softly, "to not paint the ceiling. To not soak a carpet. I have learned to clean a scene. To not reveal lies masked as truths."

He swallows.

"I have the capacity to learn from punishment."

The silence lingers between them, the unspoken reminder that this is the second punishment for one crime of jealousy.

"If you trust," he bites his lip, eyes closing and breath seeping slowly between his teeth, "that I can still learn... let me. If I've lost _that_ trust, then the belt belongs around my neck, not over my skin."

Hannibal lifts the belt from the floor, a scrape of the buckle against cold cement, the only sound as Will’s words settle heavy between them. A promise once made, a suggestion often repeated, and a solution that Hannibal knows, in the hollows of his bones, that he cannot bring himself to complete.

“ _My_ trust,” Hannibal finally responds, “is not in question. It is whether that trust has been misplaced, in a boy who acts as little more than beast.”

Hannibal’s hand runs over the curve of the boy’s ass, ungentle, to feel the heat of his wounds, the tacky blood broken from raw skin beneath his belt. His touch settles, fingernails curling not in pain but in promise, against the burn branded inside his skinny thigh.

“I have shown you my devotion,” Hannibal intones softly. “This, marked against your skin. As good as my name, as my promises that I must prove again and again. Chances upon chances forever granted because you know as well as I that no matter whose skin this scar is worn on, who truly bears its weight.”

A whisper, more to himself than Will, as Hannibal snarls softly. “I should tear it from you with my bare fingers and swallow it.”

The touches fall away, the belt set aside, the rush of anger and betrayal, hurt and bewilderment all released. A knife is drawn from the side table, the boy’s bonds severed where they hold him to the table, and there is a tonelessness, drawn from the void that begs ceaseless to be satisfied, when Hannibal speaks again.

“There are no more chances, Will. You have exhausted them. Exhausted me. My patience is at an end and I want no more words to coax it back.”

The ropes slump to the ground.

“It is fled,” Hannibal informs him, pressing a hand against his face and letting it fall away. “Endangered again, I will end you with no more thought than I spare to any other. Not an act of pleasure, but one of preservation, to save myself from you.”

Will’s breath shudders from him and he brings his hands up to curl under his face, shocked for a moment when they’re warm compared to the skin that had pressed to the unforgiving metal beneath him. For a long while he doesn’t move, gathering himself, trying to breathe, and when he finally pushes himself to standing, he feels dizziness nearly overcome him.

From the fear, the cold, the loss of fluid through blood and tears. He catches the table and holds, white-knuckled, until it passes, until he can see without fear of his vision tunnelling. 

When he looks up, Hannibal is closer, as though the half-step needed to catch Will before he had caught himself was made on reflex before he’d held back on the follow through. Will swallows, feels himself tremble with the knowledge that Hannibal would have gone, would have caught him despite the words, despite the warnings, and when he steps back he stumbles and Hannibal does catch him.

Hot hands against Will’s goosepimpled skin, and Will can’t help but cling back, just enough to seep some warmth back, enough to understand that he can’t push enough for this trust to go away, for this man to.

“I won’t,” he swallows, shakes his head, frowns. “I can’t coax it back,” he agrees. “But I will earn it.”

It is the first time a boy has ever risen from that table, stood from it still breathing and whole, and it rips a sigh from Hannibal, soft, scarcely heard, anguish and relief in turn.

His boy. His remarkable, infuriating, beautiful boy.

Hannibal dips beneath the trembling arms around him, and holds Will behind his knees, hoisting him from where he stands to carry him in his arms instead of forcing him to walk, the boy shaking so hard he feels as though he’s going to fall to pieces.

As if he hadn’t, already.

“You can,” Hannibal sighs, lifting his chin as Will buries his head against him, tucks his face against his skin and tries to find his breath again. “You will.”

Less certainty than hope, some distant desperation for them to find a stalemate in this as well, an equal understanding, acceptance, from the only other person who could ever hope to offer it.

“Tell me,” Hannibal breathes against him. “Tell me what you would have of me. I know not what to do with you, for you, in this.” He pulls the boy fiercely against him, arm tightening around his shoulders, to warm away the cold, to ease away the terror he wrought in him.

Will just holds on, curled around Hannibal as fiercely as the other is holding him, feeling his body return to himself, warm up, share the heartbeat that he had worried he would not be able to sync up with again.

He doesn’t know. He has nothing to say. Everything that he has done, none of it has earned this, none has earned this kindness of warm, of gentleness and closeness, none has earned him to live as long as he has and yet he lives, he feels his heart thud in his ears and feels its echo against his chest.

“As you are,” Will breathes. “Please, stay as you are.”

_I would have you no other way._

_I would not have you change, for me._

Hannibal hums, soft acknowledgment of the words, nose tucked against Will’s hair for a moment more before he shifts his weight enough to move with him. To carry him from the basement, alive, to bring him back to the bed that would be barren without him.

He does not linger on the words. Tries not to think of how much already has been changed by his own choice to make space for this boy. The openness wrenched from them in blood and pain, to allow them near enough for this, for Hannibal to allow Will keys to his home that feels hollow without him in it, to allow Will to claim his bed that feels cold when he is away from it.

Small adjustments and considerations to erode the old and form new constructions entirely.

Hannibal does not tell Will that with him here, Hannibal cannot stay just as he was, and in truth, would not want to when what exists instead bears such promise.

Shifting the boy higher when he passes by the body laying where it was left upon the floor, some effort to shield him from its sight, perhaps, Hannibal lays him back in the bed. He is gentle in doing so, careful to turn Will onto his side and away from the welts broken across his backside, and a firm hand finds Will’s curls to tangle in them.

A low whisper, soft, as though unable to bring himself to give breath to the words any louder than that.

“I would not fight you for this, Will, if I did not wish to sustain it.”

He stands, unwilling or unable to see whatever look this draws, hear whatever words may come of it, an admission rough enough in his throat that it drives him seeking elsewhere. To move the body, to tend to the boy’s wounds, to walk, to pace, to convince himself that perhaps to be held is not the same as to be trapped.


	19. Chapter 19

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Surprised in earnest by the result, and that Will worked sleeplessly to restore this to him. Rendered silent in thought beyond anything but the care shown to make amends for destroying something so inconsequential that Hannibal still held so dear._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the darling SLSmith22, who requested this without knowing we had already written it <3

Will hadn’t slept, not for three days now. 

Hannibal had made it clear that unless there was a legitimate excuse for Will to not attend college - being fucked to near incoherency in the front of the Bentley before class didn’t count - he had to go to class, and until there had been proof that he had attended for a week on his own, Hannibal would not allow him back into the house.

And so Will went. Barely conscious and curled in on himself at the back of the lecture halls.

Zeller managed to keep Will awake in psychology but the others were proving near-impossible to sit through, simply because Will had exhausted himself during the nights, and had to keep up his week of attendance before he could even attempt to beg his way back into Hannibal’s bed.

It’s Friday now, blissfully, and it’s taken Will four tries to get the key into the lock properly before he’s managed to get it open.

Inside, the apartment is a mess, clothes on the floor, lamps on from where Will hadn’t bothered to turn them off from the night before, containers of what could have been food or what most likely was plaster and paint litter the kitchen and lounge. Newspaper lays scrapped on the small coffee table, beside rest two wrapped packages, both in newspaper, but quite clearly something amidst the mess around them.

Will gives those a smile, tired but profoundly pleased with himself, before tossing his keys to the floor and shaking his head.

He needs to clean up. Hannibal will have his hide if he finds the place a tip as it is and Will knows he won’t motivate himself to later.

But, perhaps, he can rest his eyes just a little first, just five minutes to blink his way to wakefulness and get on with this. Then he can call Hannibal, drive over, and --

When his phone rings, it’s nearly 2am, and the apartment is still a tip. Will groans, curls in on himself. The ringing stops. A pause, and again it goes. He yawns, blindly seeks the phone in his pocket and pulls it out, hitting speaker and tossing it to the pillow by his face.

“‘lo,"

“Will.”

He sighs, presses a hand over his face, and leaves it there, muffling his voice further.

“Yeah.”

A considering pause, as on the other line, Hannibal’s eyes narrow. Unheard through the speaker, he swallows hard, but the sigh is audible as he curls his fingers against the counter, hand tight around the phone at his ear.

“Where are you?”

Will smiles faintly behind his hand, dropping it to bring the phone a little closer.

“At the fucking apartment, where should I be?”

Will grins at this minor defiance, knowing there’s nothing Hannibal can do about it now, and quite a lot he can do about it later.

The silence drags longer this time as Hannibal presses his fingers to his eyes, turns his back against the counter and lets the tension from his shoulders unravel in inches.

Hours past when Will was supposed to arrive, hours spent attempting to read and managing only a few pages, circling the house to tidy things that did not need tidying, wondering and imagining and finding himself pacing, caged, for it.

Curt annoyance, now, in response.

“Here, Will. You should be here.”

Will sighs, arching into a languid stretch. “I -”

“No,” Hannibal interrupts him, panic snapping into sharp irritation instead, a rush of words. “Though I know you must be extraordinarily burdened with the unbearable duties of sleeping to excess, do you recall the mess you left, before your absence?”

“I -” Will stifles a yawn, blinks himself to closer consciousness and frowns, trying to remember.

“Nothing worse than usual?” he ventures.

“I would accept that if you genuinely studied,” comes the terse reply. “I do not appreciate the papers all over my office, Will.”

“You appreciate seeing your name on them,” Will argues, sleepy and warm and contented to just hear his voice until he goes to sleep again. He doesn’t address the comment about sleeping in excess. He hopes he won’t need to.

“I can clean up the study,” he mumbles, curling up again, voice lowering and slowing again in rest.

“You will,” Hannibal insists, pressing the phone nearer to his ear, as though it will somehow make Will’s voice louder, closer to him. “There is hardly room for me to work for all of the notes that you’ve left scattered in your wake. You have neglected to take any of them with you, of course, for actual use in your studies.”

Images behind Hannibal’s eyes as he closes them in exasperation, in exhaustion. Men clawing filthy fingers over Will’s skin, calling him ‘baby’ and forcing him to call them ‘daddy’ and trying in futility to hurt him, rutting against him as if they were animals.

Blood spilled across cheap carpets, peeling linoleum. Theirs most likely, but perhaps his as well, wounded or dead at someone’s hand other than Hannibal’s own.

He clears his throat before the worst possibility settles in too heavy against him - disinterest. The thought of Will realizing with immediate awareness his own power and simply never returning to the house again to pursue instead a life of laughing and carousing with other students, sophisticating his kills, finding a balance nearer the status quo than what Hannibal would ever give him.

Hannibal should not worry. Convinces himself he does not, and his tone tightens as though a belt snapped tight through clenched fingers.

“When will you be here to make amends for this, Will? Must I come retrieve you, as well as tend to your messes?”

Will moans, an utterly obscene sound, and grins.

“Please pick me up?” he murmurs, stretching and drawing another sound from him that he knows will be digging into Hannibal’s skin like the nails he’s most likely driving into his palm. It amuses him, the worry behind the tone, the concern Hannibal had tried to hard to hide and Will had read regardless.

“I’ll be so good when you get here.”

Hannibal is halfway to the door already when the answer comes, and he forces a noise of disapproval into the phone.

“Two in the morning, Will,” Hannibal continues, sliding into his shoes and snaring his coat from beside the door. “Two in the morning and due to your neglect I find myself awake and drawn from my own bed to fetch you from yours.”

He stalks towards the car.

“Selfish boy.”

Somewhere in the distance of Hannibal’s tone, not buried deep enough, a smile carries on this last declaration before the phone goes silent.

Will laughs, a delighted sound that mingles with the dial tone before he finally clicks his phone off to hang up and pushes himself to sit. 

2 AM - that means he’d been sleeping for nearly eight hours, now, like the dead, apparently, if the pins and needles in his leg are anything to go by. He yawns again, rubs his wrist against his eyes and forces himself up.

He takes care of personal hygiene first, a quick shower, a thorough brushing of his teeth, shaking his wet hair out after he towels it before running a comb through it quickly.

He stumbles on his way out of the bathroom and curses, giving his extraordinarily messy apartment a brief look with his lip between his teeth before very quickly shoving the worst of it that he can gather into the bathroom and closing the door.

He’s barely to his room again when there’s a knock, and he stumbles getting back to the door as well, opening it with a sleepy apologetic smile and leaning back against the wall, inviting Hannibal closer.

“A week, Will.”

Hannibal steps inside and does not remove his shoes, but neither does he step further into the apartment. Not that anything that might be on his shoes would particularly matter, considering the state of the carpet, but Hannibal remains politely where he stands anyway.

The older man has not taken the time to dress as he normally would, it seems, with just an expensive sweater pulled on quickly above his slacks. He resists the urge to reach for the boy, to hoist him up and pin him to the wall and take his fill of him right then and there, and instead folds his hands neatly together.

A counterpoint to the harried manner of dress, to the sweep of hair unarranged that falls into his eyes.

“A week, I have been in the tyranny of your absence.” Fondness, curling warm against the edges of his scolding. “I see that this time has not been spent cleaning your own space, either.”

His tongue appears to dampen his lips, attention finally lingering on the scruffy, grinning boy beside him, still reclining against the wall.

“A week.”

“You forced me to wait,” Will reminds him. “To go to class and not go home until I did.”

He pretends to pout, and with the way his hair is already drying in messy curls over his forehead and how wide his eyes are in the dim light, he looks somewhat like a very pitiful drowned creature.

“I’ve been thinking about you,” he bites his lip, grins. “All week.”

He stretches his shoulders a little, against the wall.

“Take me home?”

Hannibal ignores the request and turns towards him, unlacing his fingers and pressing a hand against the wall beside the boy’s head. The brush of curls against his arm, the smell of soap and beneath it, sheets and sweat and skin.

It would be a menacing posture, looming dominant, directed towards anyone else.

He draws a breath, forcing himself to resist, and a brow raises.

“And did you? Attend your classes?”

Will watches him, knows that Hannibal already knows the answer, knows that had Will disobeyed the lie would be discovered, that it would be punished in a way neither would enjoy. It would not be a beating. It would be another week of isolation.

He parts his lips with his tongue and blinks languidly, still not quite awake.

“Every single one,” he whispers, swallowing gently.

Hannibal reminds himself, as he draws nearer still to take in the scent of Will, what lead him to send the boy away, to deny Will of their closeness in light of botching Hannibal’s hunt.

A necessity, time alone to consider his actions and what they might have cost them both.

“Take me home?”

Even though he hardly cares about the classes now, Hannibal responds with pleasure to the words. Too soon yet to give up the game between them. He needs it, wills it as a distraction from his own concern, kept sleepless and increasingly fraught as he waited to hear the door open and that sound never came.

Relieved from that panic only now, now that he can feel Will beneath him as he pins him softly to the wall, to feel his heart beat and know his nearness as though they had been apart weeks rather than days.

“Yes,” Hannibal finally agrees, sighing soft against Will’s hair before turning his tone terse once more. “And should I carry you out as well? Or are you more capable of standing than you are of cleaning up after yourself?”

Will makes a gentle noise but resists pressing close here as well - he will when they get to the house, where he can wrap his legs around Hannibal and be carried, laid down, pressed close to…

“I can walk,” he assures him, tilting his head up to see Hannibal again, both of them so close now, just a breath away, and Will slips out from under Hannibal’s arm to return to the main room and gather his sweater from the back of the couch, much to Hannibal’s dismay, and to take up the two wrapped, shapeless things on his coffee table.

“We can go,” Will tells him, returning, tilting his head with a smile.

Outside, it’s very cold in the early morning, and Will ends up curled on the heated seat and dozing by the time the garage door closes behind them. He wakes with a jolt, blinking sleepily at Hannibal in the driver’s seat.

“I missed you,” he tells him honestly, quietly, before pushing himself to stretch, bending near backwards in his seat with another utterly sexual sound as his muscles stretch from laxity. He sends Hannibal a pleased look before gathering the two parcels and getting out of the car.

Inside, he sets them in the kitchen, just on the counter - shoes off at the door, of course - before returning to where Hannibal is setting his shoes away and finally pressing close enough to kiss him.

“I really missed you.”

It doesn’t need to be spoken, but neither is it hidden, the ache of Hannibal’s longing for his boy, his growing concern over what may have happened that delayed Will’s awaited return. It’s felt in the way he folds his arms around Will and lifts him from the floor, in how he moves to support him when Will’s legs immediately wrap over his hips, lingering rather than ushering him off to the bedroom right away.

It is felt in the way Hannibal does not scold him any longer - no more thinly veiled excuses for the worry that shows so overtly.

Hannibal buries his nose against the curve of Will’s neck and breathes him in as though Will were oxygen itself, deprived to Hannibal for the length of their absence. He closes his eyes and seeks out every nuance of information he can find, reinforces to himself the familiar smell of his boy.

Will tilts his head to allow Hannibal to nuzzle against him, almost animalistic in the way he reclaims what is his.

“You have not slept,” Hannibal observes gently. It was obvious enough before, all softly slurred words and sleepy looks, but now he can feel the exhaustion in the familiar heaviness of Will’s body braced against him.

Will shakes his head against him and smiles softly. He doesn’t elaborate. Instead, he nuzzles closer, not quite as possessive in his scenting of the other man as he had been of him, but it’s just as needed for him to feel that, to know that Hannibal lifts his chin for him.

Like two wolves, checking on each other at the end of a hunt, from a long time parted.

“I’ll be fine,” he mumbles, already wanting to curl up again, his body demanding a catch up on all the hours he’d missed fulfilling his obligations, and possibly forgotten promises. “We can sleep in on the weekend,” he reminds, almost unnecessarily.

Will grins, relishes in the closeness when Hannibal starts to make his way up to the bedroom, carrying Will with him. It’s so comfortable, this, so familiar, and neither say anything until Hannibal sets Will to the bed and he finally unfurls onto it, turning onto his stomach and sighing deeply against the sheets.

He feels a hand in his hair, carding through the damp strands, and arches into it, murmurs something softly in French, an endearment, a request for company and softness and closeness after a week without. It hardly matters, now.

He doesn’t have enough energy left to call Hannibal back when he heads downstairs again, perhaps to check the lights and locks. Instead he just dozes, determined to be awake when the man slides into bed with him so he can curl close.

Will groans, makes the effort to shuck his clothes and shift under the blankets before his eyes close.

Hannibal glances towards the study as he passes it. There is a small stack of papers on the corner, and he wonders if perhaps he may have exaggerated the mess that Will left behind. No matter. Hannibal will scatter the papers in the morning for him to pick up, both delighting in the effort as he arches and whines and bends so beautifully.

It matters only that Will is here now, and safe. The thought plays skipping, repeating, until Hannibal allows himself to hear its rhythm. Leaning against the doorway to the study, his attention settles on the couch where last they began to discover new territories unbroached by either, thrilling and frightening in their newness.

But this feeling, now, sits heavier still. Hannibal closes his eyes, pressing them beneath his fingers. He finds the specific place on his solar plexus where that weight lingers, no longer threatening to snap his ribs from their moorings but still smothering, and he names it fear.

So named, it is dismissed. Will is here now, and safe.

Hannibal winds his way through the house, shutting off lights as he goes. He pours a glass of water for Will in the kitchen and in passing notes the newspaper bundles left on the counter. A faint twist of lips, displeased by this disorder, but Will had ducked in here without retrieving his usual water to carry back upstairs.

Left for him, then, Hannibal knows, and gingerly unpeels the newsprint.

Bone white, accented with blue. Peonies, painted on delicate porcelain from a world apart. Shining gold striped through cracks as though rivers running wild, reflecting the low lights in glimmering bands. Shards he last saw splintered across the tile floor in a bout of rage for a presumed betrayal, now whole again in a new and unexpected way.

Hannibal traces the pad of a thumb across one of the joins, follows its glittering path and feels its rough imperfections, and he knows then that Will himself restored them to this state of broken beauty.

He is, for a moment, taken aback. Surprised in earnest by the result, and that Will worked sleeplessly to restore this to him. Rendered silent in thought beyond anything but the care shown to make amends for destroying something so inconsequential that Hannibal still held so dear.

Will stirs when the glass is set beside him on the nightstand, a sleepy purr as he stretches bare against the sheets. Hannibal peels his own clothes free and lets them fall where he stands, settling heavy into the bed behind Will.

He pulls his boy tightly back against him and buries his face into the still-damp curls of hair to sigh him in again, anew. Soft nuzzles, breaths that declare silently _I know you, I longed for you, I worried for you and now you are here_.

“Beautiful, Will.”

Just a hum in reply, Will awake enough to register the words but not to understand them. For a moment just relishing in the possessive touches, the reacquaintance with each other. Then something stirs in him, a recognition of the words and their appropriate meaning, perhaps, synapses firing slow but eventually striking, and he arches back, stretching against Hannibal with a pleased groan.

"I tried," he mumbles, but he's smiling, turning into the continued nuzzling, bringing up a hand to curl over where Hannibal holds him.

_I know you, I longed for you. I missed you, and now you're here._

He sighs, exhausted, and allows himself to relax entirely with the monster at his back.

He had found the shards carefully folded away, during a day he'd woken late and wandered the house alone in Hannibal's absence, and the guilt had been almost crippling; a memory he had pushed down far and fast, locked until then. The pain in Hannibal’s expression, the genuine fondness for both pieces, both utterly priceless in their complexity, when Will had so heartlessly shattered both.

He had started to sort them then, near-impossible with their near-identical pattern, their once beautiful shape, and had kept them hidden until such a time as he could take them home unnoticed and begin his work.

Kintsugi.

Perfectly imperfect.

He bites his lip and smiles when Hannibal doesn't stop touching him. Hands spread across Will’s skin, taking in as much as Hannibal can grasp, never enough to satisfy and so seeking, over the curls of hair low on his belly, palm warm across his hips, his stomach, gliding against his chest to pull him back further still.

One hand remains lower, though, tracing the pale thighs that twitch in response, to find the small scar, round and raised, and press his thumb across it.

His mark, his boy, here against him with quickening pulse and squirming sounds of sleepy pleasure.

Hannibal takes his taste as well, kissing languidly across Will’s shoulder to rest his lips where his neck curves to meet it, to feel his blood race warm beneath his skin.

It matters that Will remembered his actions, matters more still that he recalled his breathless promise to correct them, and matters most that he did so, at the cost of his own sleep while meeting Hannibal’s insatiable demands, repairing what was wrought in his rage.

“Better now, than before,” Hannibal responds softly.

Another pleased sound, a flush to Will’s cheeks, and he curses how exhausted he is, hates that the most he can do is roll his hips back against the obvious and steadily growing erection between Hannibal’s legs.

His lips draw back when the scar is brushed again, not a month made and still so sensitive it sends him into shaking when it's touched. It's become one of Hannibal’s favorite torments to spread Will wide and kiss the darkened skin, to brush his lips over it, to breathe against it.

It has Will writhing, breathless, and he adores every moment.

A soft keen leaves Will’s lips and he trembles, a sensation brought about by the closeness, the softness, this, after a week of not.

Hannibal takes up every tremor that tenses through Will’s tired body, presses it back against his own skin instead.

“Stay still,” he breathes into Will’s hair, hips rolling against him now, a languid pace steady and serene. Antagonistic activities, to stir and soothe him all at once, and delight in the pull of desires emanating at odds from the writhing, whimpering thing in his arms.

He reaches back enough to grasp the lube from beside the bed, rubbing slickness between his fingers. Cold, wet as he drags his fingertips between Will’s thighs from behind, rubbing slow circles against his opening. Hannibal hums as the boy’s hips turn back against him, twisting towards the movement of his fingers.

Even in near-sleep, a decadent creature, unable and unwilling to resist the tug of temptation after time apart.

Hannibal draws a deep breath as he parts and penetrates him, pressing inside with a single slow push.

A moan, drawn long and low, and Will’s body turns into familiar shapes, wanting Hannibal deeper, hot inside him. He doesn't hear the words or perhaps just doesn’t heed them, and rolls his hips in pleasure, squeezes his muscles, moans again.

It's rare they have sex this way, gentle and almost loving - it's possessive, Will convinces himself - and he relishes every moment, quiet noises and twitches of his hips.

"More?" he mumbles, grinning and turning his face to the pillow, hands curled lightly in the sheets. 

Hannibal shushes him gently, a hushed whisper against his ear as though through words alone he would soothe the boy to sleep again even as he splays his fingers inside him, a delicious stretch just a little too quick to be comfortable. A low sound, bitten softly into Will’s shoulder to feel his groan ache satisfied from him as Hannibal rolls his hips in response, a week without relief - begun from anger towards Will’s behavior, dragged out from anticipation of his return.

“Quiet,” Hannibal purrs against him, withdrawing his fingers to slick his cock instead. Long strokes rubbed between the boy’s cheeks, rutting in lazy thrusts, unhurried.

Catching his other hand beneath Will’s jaw, palm pressed against his throat, Hannibal pulls Will’s head back against his shoulder, holds him arched there to feel the boy’s breath against his cheek.

“Have you missed me, Will?” A question that needs not be asked, the answer already abundantly clear, but words that Hannibal desires to hear all the same, a voice to echo the movements of Will’s eager writhing against his own.

Will bites his lip against the teasing and finds he still can’t keep himself quiet, unused, especially here, to holding his voice in pleasure.

"Yes, yes." Another whine, another gasped and warm noise and a pleased shiver through Will’s entire body. Nerves and senses honed sharp, here, now, with this attention against him. He wants nothing more than to settle on his knees, back arched, to present himself and be rewarded with a sound fucking. 

"I ached.” A familiar script yet one never yet untrue. He had not had time to hunt, had barely had time to eat - he can’t remember if he has, today - and this... he has missed this.

"Please."

Another pull to tug Will’s chin back, to bring their mouths together, catching in the corners at this awkward angle but enough for Hannibal to taste his lips, the grin that curves across them as Will is once again brought into possession beneath Hannibal’s hands.

He sets himself against the boy’s opening, a careful rolling motion in his hips to bring himself just inside his boy, sighing against his skin, head ducked against Will’s shoulder to watch his cock press into into him in inches, little strokes both tender and teasing.

The instructions change again, no longer hushing the boy to quiet, now demanding to hear him speak.

“Tell me, Will,” comes the insistent murmur, as Hannibal spreads a hand across Will’s belly to pull him back against him, finding a rocking motion between the movement of their bodies far removed from Hannibal’s earlier anticipation of yanking Will by his hair as he came through the door and bending him over the dining room table, bruises banged into skinny thighs as Hannibal fucked him until he sobbed.

Gentle, now, a rarer thing and - surprising to them both - no less satisfying for the serene searching of hands and mouths and shifting hips.

Will nearly purrs with pleasure, drawing a knee up to open himself further, to feel the familiar stretch, so much missed, as Hannibal starts a rhythm.

He’s still only half awake, pleased and warm and now horny, unbelievably horny...

"I missed your hands," he says, voice steady but low. "I missed them wrapping around me, pulling me up..." He gasps, pushes back more, finds he has little say in the matter. In truth, he has missed all aspects of Hannibal’s hands; his clever fingers, his strength, the way his hand prints felt over his ass and thighs, across his face in anger...

Hannibal adjusts, just enough, and the next thing pulled from Will is a helpless little whimper.

"This, I've missed this, please..." Will laughs, exhausted but delighted, when Hannibal bites gently against his shoulder.

" _Ah_ -"

Another shush, breathed against the curve of Will’s neck where Hannibal holds his chin in place, head resting back against Hannibal’s shoulder. Quieting his pleas, eager to hear them, a muddle of desires to hear every sound and feel every movement that his boy would yield to him, all at once.

“Then it behooves us both,” Hannibal whispers, voice rough, “that you not earn that particular punishment again.” A kiss, draped warm and open-mouthed up to the curve of Will’s jaw, teeth grazing his ear. “I have thought of little but you, to the point of distraction. Everywhere, Will - your messes, your clothes, the glass left beside the bed. Everywhere I look you have left your mark.”

The words shift into a low groan, as Hannibal works himself deeper now, burying himself as deeply as he can, as slowly as he can.

Fingernails draw across the tightening muscles of Will’s stomach, hold his hip in place for a few languid thrusts, and finally a broad hand settles around his cock to tug the length of it, a hum of approval as Will grows harder still despite his languor.

Their own state of kintsugi, repairing the sharp cracks between them to become more beautiful than before.

“I have missed you, Will.”

He presses the length of his body against Will, nearly turning him onto his stomach. No words spoken about his alarm, fear, worry that sent him pacing trapped and restless, but tangible in the grasping hands that seek to cover every inch of Will’s body with his own.

“Painfully.”

Another mewl of pleasure, Will’s fingers splaying and folding on the sheets, lips parting on more little needy noises.

Will hadn’t been able to hunt well, sleep well, do anything beyond throw himself headfirst into fixing the things he broke. Days were spent barely awake behind a fold out desk in college, playing tic tac toe in psychology between two desks and a book laid between with Zeller, trying to stay awake in his other classes alone.

He had been restless, hungry, physically aching for the man now behind him, now granting him the mercy of deeper and harder and more, even if just by increments.

"Hannibal -" It's almost sobbed, but no tears, just a desperate need for him. Will raises his hips, arches his back, relishes in the fingers in his hair that alternate between gentle stroking and harsh tugs.

Hannibal resists the drive for release, fights down the tightening sensation spiralling through his stomach to be here, now, like this for as long as he can stand it. A shudder, snarling past his lips, as he grips Will close against him, a constant shifting of bodies to touch and to taste and to smell and to gasp when they sync together in their movements. Hannibal sinks an arm across the front of Will’s shoulders to hold him in place, his other hand still stroking in time to his own quickening thrusts, shallower, to open his eyes again and watch as it sends shivers pulsing through Will’s body.

“Ask me,” he whispers rough against Will’s ear - asking to be asked, a demand and a submission all at once.

“Ask me for it.” Hannibal’s hand stops, fist wrapped just a little too tight around the throbbing pink head of Will’s cock, to hold him at bay, still pushing him into the sheets, a sheen of sweat between them.

"Harder..." Will's writhing, now, twisting beneath him and stretching, legs shifting wider, hips rolling back. He’s trembling, close to release and denied it, though his words are heeded and Hannibal starts to fuck him in earnest.

"Thought about you all week," he nearly sobs, stretches his arms up in front of him, laughs when Hannibal brings a hand down to pin them to the bed together.

"Wanted this, wanted you..."

_So much, so desperately…_

"Hannibal... please," Will deepens the arch in his back. “Please, please make me cum... make me -"

Forehead pressed to Will’s shoulder, eyes closed, Hannibal sees him. Sees him bent over his cheap table seaming porcelain together with gold smeared across his fingers and his face, sees him tipping back only to jerk awake again, fighting sleep in his classes. Sees him in bed, restless, wild body twisting and turning in the sheets, and a breath draws in sharply, as he sees Will bent and bowed, fingers inside himself, caressing his scar and whimpering Hannibal’s name in his absence.

Hannibal’s arm tightens, squeezing Will against him now in an effort to feel every muscle move when he writhes, every breath spread his ribs panted and pleading, ever pulse and every shudder as Hannibal loosens his grip enough on Will’s cock to feel him come undone, hot, thick across his fingers.

He follows, fast, uncoiling warm and wet inside Will, a harsh sigh tearing itself from him in release, body snapped taut with orgasm held at bay, himself, too long during Will’s exile.

A hard swallow, as he starts to relax, as Will whines softly with his own pleasure as Hannibal works his hand slowly over him, dragging from him every drop of white and every sigh he can.

Will doesn’t stop him, even when it goes from pleasurable to painful with how sensitive he is; he relishes every second, every touch against him until he whimpers in earnest and, with a kiss to the back of his neck, Hannibal lets him go.

Heavy against his back, panting, just as sated and spent and pleased.

Will moans, a gentle noise, when Hannibal pulls out of him, and turns, wrapping his arms around the man to bring him close, to kiss him deeply and take his fill of it.

His body is heavy, tired, languid and warm and he knows within a few moments he will be asleep so deeply nothing will wake him.

He wraps his legs around Hannibal regardless, clinging almost childishly to the man above him, and Hannibal holds him fast as he turns onto his back. Easily, he pulls Will on top of him, to lay curled and small against the length of his body. He settles a hand in Will’s hair and one against his back, stroking slowly along his spine.

“You must tend to your mess tomorrow,” Hannibal informs him, gently amused by the thought of scattering the boy’s papers across the study. Perhaps he’ll make him crawl for them. Perhaps he’ll make him do it stripped bare, to be rewarded - or punished - spread moaning across the floor.

A hum of pleasure, as he tilts his cheek into his boy’s hair and kisses him, feeling Will’s breath already slowed to sleep.


	20. Chapter 20

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _For a moment he wonders if he’s lost time, if, for one brief moment, he’s returned to the scene from months ago: Will covered head to toe in blood, hair matted with it, skin slick with it, grinning from the floor like a depraved little nymph._
> 
> **Warnings for this chapter** : copious amounts of blood, graphic depictions of surgery, graphic violence.
> 
> For Zadikall, who requested protective Hannibal :)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes from the writer's room: read to the very end. The _very_ end.
> 
> *points up* there are notes to consider when you finish.
> 
> A huge, _huge_ thank you to anyone and everyone who read, commented, left kudos, bookmarked, passed this over, showed it to their friends, considered it at all. It has gained quite a following and we are so proud of this little story that _did_. To say it's the story that _could_ would be wrong, because it always could but we never planned it to be this long, to have so many other characters and factors involved. It was meant to be a one-shot. 3 chapters maximum. And yet, here we are on 20.
> 
> Thanks, also, to the person who listens to me rant at 2am about how Will this Hannibal that. Heather has kept me perfectly insane and I could not be more grateful <3
> 
> \- V
> 
> A billion thank yous. Thank you everyone who's read, enjoyed, commented, kudos'd, reblogged, made amazing images and found music that reminded them of this craziness, dropped us notes, sent us kinks, or even just screeched at us from a distance. It means more than we can put into words (which is saying something, since we are so fucking full of them). Thank you even if all you did was side-eye all of this depravity from a distance (I don't blame you). This has all been so much more than we planned on it being, and every step of it has been an utter joy (and terror, at times!). We've loved every minute of it.
> 
> And, because this my section of the thanks dammit, all my love to Val, always, for being my constant in every way. <3
> 
> \- H

The call had come late, and unexpected.

Neither Will nor Hannibal had included the other in a hunt for weeks, content, for the moment, to share only the aftermath of each respective kill and save the other the work to get there - each for their own reasons. 

Reunions were always silent at the beginning, just soft presses together, lips and hands exploring, finding new scars, tasting death. Then reclaiming, almost violent nuzzling to scent the other back to themselves, to feel them return, hands fumbling and clothes scattered and harsh deep fucking to remember, to remind.

Then came rest. Together. Hands and lips exploring again.

Now Hannibal idles the car two houses from the address Will had given, forcing down the niggling sensation that something was wrong. The air itself smelled wrong, clammy; a neighbourhood too normal to have the lights off on the front porch - the only house seemingly entirely locked down.

And Will’s voice.

Hannibal doesn’t think of how Will had sounded when he’d called, words too quick, as though with excitement, and laden heavy with anything but.

He switches the music off. A distraction, now, noise that detracts from the focus that holds him. The car follows in turn, clicking quietly to silence. Senses sharp, piqued by something he can’t quite pin down beyond vague correlations.

Fingers drum against the steering wheel. A memory, there, of his hands grasping Will instead of the wheel, the boy writhing flushed and crying out his name as he rode Hannibal as fiercely as he could in the cramped confines.

He tells himself he’s worrying, again, a feeling unfamiliar enough through his life that he is still acquainting himself with it. He tells himself that last time he felt that sharpening in his blood, the boy had merely fallen asleep. Unlikely now, considering where Hannibal knows him to be, but a worthwhile reminder of how this sensation can turn Hannibal’s senses against himself.

Sighing, allowing that at least to ease the feeling, he checks the time.

His jaw clenches, once.

An addendum to their tenuous accord to not disrupt, to hardly comment, on the activities of the other was that Hannibal would make himself available to the boy when he was out. Will’s habits have always been riskier, for himself being so relatively small, for his method and clientele being far removed from Hannibal safely speaking promises to boys in his own bedroom. 

The call had brought him here and here he has waited, resistant to involving himself before he was needed - twenty minutes since the boy was supposed to appear, twenty minutes since he should have thrown himself relaxed and ready to be reclaimed into the car, twenty minutes since Hannibal should have felt the grasping fingers and warm mouth pressed against him in adoration with the boy’s constant praise of having rescued him.

Twenty minutes too long.

Hannibal emerges from the car, sweeping his coat free of the door and pressing it closed, rather than slamming it. He approaches the house, quickly enough to not be seen lingering, grateful for the suspicious darkness that still shields him from nosy neighbors.

When he tries the door, it’s unlocked, and another fold of his coat ensures no fingerprints when he, just as gently, presses it closed behind him. Within, the house is large, the layout much the same to his own through the interior feels cluttered, a family home, perhaps, or simply someone who enjoyed having many things in few rooms.

There are only lights on upstairs, evident by the shadows they cast against the stairs, the windows don’t face the street.

It’s quiet, the quiet of a house in slumber, appropriate for the hour of night that Hannibal has found himself here, and yet there is a lingering… something. The silence isn’t full, it struggles with soft footfalls and gentle shifts, with gasped thick breaths.

And then a sound, unmistakable, like meat on meat, an almost rhythmic pounding interrupted only by a soft cry of pain - one muffled by its constant repetition, by minutes, hours of slowly growing weaker.

The rhythm stops, the cry turns to a hitched sob, the odd thickness to it as before that tightens the worry in Hannibal’s chest to something almost tangible.

A voice, a curse, another sharp kick and then silence.

Shuffles and quick short breaths. And nothing more.

Enough sound to follow.

Shoes peeled free in steps as he goes, footfalls silent, fast on the stairs to take them two at a time, shrugging his coat off to let it fall behind. An embarrassment, if he is wrong. A hinderance, if he is not.

He smells the blood before he sees it.

Heavy and metallic, but with something more to it - acrid, bitter. Hannibal hesitates, hearing another unsteady step, a rasp of breath at odds with one far softer.

Enough sound to follow.

The torrent of adrenaline cascades down Hannibal’s spine. A blink, a slowing, as if underwater when everything becomes sharpened, senses hyperaware, every muscle pulled tight and ready to uncoil, time unfurling languid around him as he moves.

He cuts the corner quickly, arm swinging wide in approximation of where the floorboard creaked beneath the step that guides him, and it makes contact on its return. An adjustment, as his elbow finds an unfamiliar face and his arm turns in the surprise to catch this stranger around his head, a thoughtful turn to snare him rather than merely strike.

Time enough, in that instant of surprise, to see Will.

For a moment he wonders if he’s lost time, if, for one brief moment, he’s returned to the scene from months ago: Will covered head to toe in blood, hair matted with it, skin slick with it, grinning from the floor like a depraved little nymph.

Then he blinks, once, again, and the grin is a grimace, the floor is carpeted and heavy with the weight of the blood already seeped into it, and Will looks barely conscious, eyelids fluttering but eyes unfocused. He doesn’t make the soft sounds anymore.

A word, one, breathed, but loud enough for the boy to turn his head, blink his eyes as wide as he can get them before they close, too heavy to hold up.

The grimace soothes. A hand, suddenly small, so, so small, reaches, digs into the carpet, relaxes, and he whimpers.

Time, Hannibal has found, conserves itself in these moments in the same manner as energy. It can be neither created nor destroyed, but merely change forms. As it slowed, the instant that he connected his elbow with the man now caught beneath his arm, the same instant in which he saw Will - his, and his alone - reach grasping, stretched as if a rubber band.

And now, with a snap, it returns.

A flurry of movement, when the boy can part the darkness enough to see it. Motion, impossibly fast, savagery in the snarl that rips itself unrestrained from Hannibal. Feral, animalistic, beneath his carriage and entirely embraced.

The man is faster than expected, hand snaring Hannibal by his collar to jerk them both back to the ground with a shout. Better this than standing, even as the air is knocked from Hannibal’s lungs in the fall, not enough to keep him still, from mounting the man heavy across his stomach with a rapid twist of his body, legs pressing hard over him.

Swings, some more direct than others, narrowly dodged, and Hannibal nearly misses the man reaching for the knife left bloody on the floor.

Nearly misses it, but does not. Will’s knife, from the first kill he shared with Hannibal, as familiar to him as the flicking motions he’s watched Will perform, idle and bored, precariously close to the leather of his sofa.

Time dilates, and as the man takes up the knife it is effortless to catch his wrist and bend it, twisting until a crackle of fibers tearing between joints splinters through the sounds of struggle. The man shouts again, cut off hitched and panicked, hyperventilating now in terror as he throws his body up against Hannibal, unable to turn him off, a resettling of weight shifting easily over the man beneath him.

Hannibal smells him piss himself, and snorts.

The knife has fallen, suspended almost mid-air when Hannibal snatches it, drives it screeching through ribs against bone cutting cartilage and letting the man’s voice, the splintering sounds of his body, wet and satisfying, fill the air.

Held with both hands, dragged down the length of his chest as if in some crude facsimile of the dissections he performs so often, but no mind for the meat this time, this instead an act of rage, snarling and brutal and afraid for the boy on the floor behind him, driven to protect and destroy.

For Will, it all passes in a haze. Shifting figures, like shadows in the water, the sound of movement, the thick thuds of bodies falling to the floor, the struggle there that he can hear with his ear pressed so close to the floor. He remembers listening to a hand-wound watch across the length of a long wooden table, tilting his head and grinning when he heard the seconds vibrate through the wood, as though from beneath time itself, as though just outside it.

It was one of the few times his father had spent time with him.

They’d sold the wooden table a few weeks later, and Will had had to study curled in the old lumpy armchair after that.

He swallows now, tries to understand if the thudding is rhythmic because Hannibal is relentless, or because Will’s heart is.

He thinks of the club.

When he hears his name, it’s like waking from a dream, and then, in a moment, it’s sharp as nails to his skin, and Will flinches, gasps, forces his eyes up to see Hannibal, feels his lips tilt in a smile before that vanishes, replaced with slack lips and panic.

“I was late, I kept you, I’m sorry -”

“Quiet,” Hannibal responds, and it sounds harsher than he means it to. He flexes his hands, studying them, painted in bone and blood, some his own but mostly not. It isn’t like him to lose time, when he’s measuring its rhythms, he keeps its tempo steadily especially in moments like that.

But this had been a break, pages missing in the symphony, and when he found the timing again the man’s face resembled nothing that could be construed as such, a horror of tissue above where he found his hands, lodged wrist-deep in the man’s chest cavity, ribs broken sharp against his skin.

Hannibal hums, but finds that it does not settle the seizing of his heart as the grounding sound normally would. Not now, with Will curled at his feet.

He looks so small that Hannibal’s chest feels as raw, ripped and laid bare, as the once-man sprawled across the floor behind him. Ducking next to him, a careful crouch, he runs a hand across Will’s arm, and lifts it gingerly. Just enough to see another gout of blood bubble from beneath it, that acrid bitter smell he caught before, stomach bile, fresh.

A soft sound, mewling and weak, and the hand is drawn back with surprising strength to press back against the wound that marrs him. Will turns his head away, eyes closed and presses his cheek against the bloody carpet.

In defiance of his knowledge of murder and medicine alike, Hannibal will not let himself think of it as bad. It is not, it will not be, there is nothing done here that cannot be fixed and there is nothing that he can do to make up for the twenty minutes spent in waiting while his boy bled out and he is sundered by the thought, a sound born from far inside that he has not heard himself allowed since he was a child.

“Stay still,” Hannibal instructs him, a hand pressed to the boy’s cheek - cold, clammy, forcing another breath through Hannibal’s teeth - before he rises to move quickly and find his coat.

Will doesn’t move from obedience and inability both, eyes barely open and only enough to see the blood smeared against his eyelashes, seeing vague shadows with the one not pressed to the floor. The images mingle and he has to close them. Dizzy.

Thump-thump-thump.

Choose anyone you like, his own voice echoes back to him, and Will blinks, trying to stay awake, we’ll make a feast of them.

He presses his lips together, tastes blood, and suddenly a panic wells inside him that he can’t control, can’t stop rising like bile in his throat. He’s above this failure, he’s better than this… he’s just started to earn back a trust he’d nearly torn asunder, he can’t break it with this, not with this.

“I’ll clean… I’ll clean the blood up, I’ll clean up all the blood I promise, I’m sorry -” the words breathless, quick, slipping from his lips and landing cool against his hand where it rests by his face.

A loud wail of pain as Hannibal’s steady, familiar hands shift to move him, and Will sobs. Everything hurts.

“You will,” Hannibal insists, a blind instruction, words unfit to speak and thoughts too muddled to put to words addling what comes out, tangling his lucidity and rendering it opaque.

His coat is laid out over the boy, wrapped around him to trap whatever warmth still remains, to keep him bundled and tight, and there is an apology, unheard, as he lifts the boy in his arms. Staggering, once, under the weight that feels like so many other boys hefted motionless into his arms.

Hannibal grits his teeth and holds him tighter, to stir the motion in him, to hear his breath, to know that he has not ended up as they have, to know that Hannibal’s failures to end his life have not been in vain, now, his boy lost to some other hand.

So small in his arms, and so very heavy, and so painfully still that it’s all Hannibal can do to keep him awake. 

“You will clean it,” Hannibal tells him, voice rough as he carefully descends the stairs. No time to put his shoes on, he passes by them. “It is a terrible mess. I have taught you better than this.”

“‘m sorry,” Another sob, another shudder of pain as Hannibal holds him tighter to him, pushes the door closed behind them with his shoulder, walks quickly to the car. Will shivers in the cold, one hand free and grasping for the coat to pull it closer, to pull Hannibal closer, smearing blood against his neck in his clumsy attempts.

He mumbles now, words slowly slurring, “He got angry. Couldn’t hold him… stronger than I thought, rough… he was cruel,” Will’s brows furrow and he swallows, “Wanted to leave scars, said he would… Didn’t wanna let him, not his to mark, not his to scar.”

Will feels the hot blood against the cut too deep to be safe, to be something to fix, and sobs, tears hot on his face as he shakes his head.

“I couldn’t stop him he marked anyway, he cut… I can’t… can’t wipe it, it won’t go away, Hannibal it won’t go away -”

He struggles for a moment almost tearing the wound further in his attempt to try peel it away, make it not there. He sobs again, crying harder.

“I don’t want to be his I don’t… I promise I tried to fight him, I did, I couldn’t get away I couldn’t -”

“You are not his,” Hannibal snarls softly, a warning against an attacker now dead, still somehow a threat to them both. “You are mine, Will. Mine alone.”

Another shift of the heaviness in his arms, another quiet wail of pain, and Hannibal presses his face to the top of Will’s head. Mouth brushing his hair, blood and sweat across his lips, reclaiming as they ever do with fierce nuzzling and warm breaths and now more urgent, more dire that he does.

“You are mine and will only ever be,” Hannibal breathes, and loosens his hand enough to pull open the door of the car. It is awkward, and it hurts, for Will to be set inside. The house can wait, the body can wait, everything can wait but Will, here, now, and the blood that spreads across the leather seats.

It is harder for Hannibal than any life he has ended for him to part from the boy enough to return to the driver’s seat, but a brush of fingers down the boy’s cold cheek and he forces it, makes himself make the movements and makes himself start the car and makes himself speak, speak, fill the air with words rather than hear how weak are the sobs of the little wolf laid across the seat behind him.

“He is dead. Ended by my own hands, rather than yours. Is that what you wished for, Will? For me to clean up your messes for you when you could not?”

He doesn’t know what else to say, no other words make sense but to scold the boy into reaction, the violence of words that yield to him the same reaction as violence of hands.

“I’ll be better, I can be better…” Will wails, curling in on himself against the seatbelts Hannibal had secured around him, pulling the coat closer, shaking despite the heat it’s keeping inside. He sobs again, quiet tears as the pain renders Will unable to do more than make noises and tremble.

It went wrong, it went so wrong and instead of returning victorious, he’s here, now, messing up the back seat of Hannibal’s beloved car, something he will pay for with his hide, he knows. But something had felt wrong, it had felt wrong going in there, that night. The man was too confident, too collected, and too cruel with him, crueller than usual, cruel like Hannibal had once been before… before…

“Don’t you dare,” the words are hissed from the front seat, dark eyes on Will through the rearview mirror, “Don’t you dare give your tears to him, do you understand me? You cry for no one but me, Will. You will not cry for him.”

Will’s teeth grit in pain and he whines, a long, helpless noise of pain. But he bites back the sobs, he holds them back with every ounce of concentration he still has left.

It’s getting darker, harder to see.

“I’m trying,” he gasps, “Hannibal… nng… I can’t breathe…”

His voice is higher, a weak tone Hannibal has never heard from his boy before, never. Not even during the cruellest of lessons, not even when he had pulled the boy so far past his limits he had nearly lost consciousness in his arms, not even then.

Will coughs.

Then he stops speaking.

“Will.” Hannibal watches him, motionless in the rearview mirror, nearly misses a red light and jerks the brakes to a stop. “Will!”

It is an order, now, a sharpness of tone heard only before when Will has been strung up in the basement, infuriating Hannibal past his sense of reason, past his restraint.

“Breathe, Will,” growls the older man, ignoring the order himself as his breath pulls short in his lungs and his heart bangs against his ribs. “You can. You will.”

“You are mine, Will,” insists Hannibal, peeling out past the light, a smooth movement of the car despite the erratic driving. “Your tears, your breath, mine alone. You have given them to me. You will not shed your tears for him, but you will breathe for me.”

A shudder, audible, as the boy forces a breath but it isn’t enough, Hannibal knows, it isn’t enough to fill his lungs and there isn’t enough blood left in him to make it work harder and he speeds now, socked foot stomped against the gas.

“You gave yourself to me. You swore, Will. Do you remember what you promised? Your oath to me? I will hear it. Now. Tell me. Ask me again.”

Another shallow breath and Will swallows, a thick glottal sound that doesn’t seem to get the desired effect. He coughs, shakes his head, curls harder against himself and cries out, high, when his wound is jarred again. Another series of sobs, bitten back, Will working with every sinew to keep the tears back though they flow freely regardless.  
Everything hurts.

“Teach me,” he manages, weakly, eyes closed and body shuddering in shock beneath Hannibal’s coat. It smells like him, Will nuzzles against it.

“What else, Will?” Hannibal is driving relying on his peripheral vision now, thanking everything he can spare a thought to that it’s late, that few cars are out at all. “Tell me.”

“Wanted you to teach me,” Will mumbles again, happy to curl up in the warmth that is finally reaching his limbs as the car speeds through the empty well-paved roads of Baltimore. “Was never a good student…”

“Will.”

Hannibal’s jaw works, he hits the brakes just to jarr Will back to consciousness, to watch him scramble, sleepy uncoordinated movements, to keep himself in the seat. But his head lolls now, eyes closed, chest barely moving with breath.

“William Graham.” it’s hissed, the tone dangerous, low, and Hannibal’s eyes are wide when Will doesn’t respond, when all he manages is a soft moan and a brief furrowing of his brows.

They’re two blocks from the house. Just two more. The tyres screech as Hannibal gets the car moving again. Will’s hand goes slack against the coat, falls palm-up against the pristine floor.

“And if I tired of you, Will?” Hannibal asks, knuckles white against the wheel as he turns, speeds, sees the house approaching. “If I find you uninteresting? Unteachable?”

He hears a breath, just stronger than the ones around it, and imagines it contains words, the rest of their promise, sworn again and again, and so he answers it.

“I will. I will kill you, then. Not someone else. That is mine to take. You are mine, Will, and you will not die. Not now. Not like this.”

The turn is sharp into the driveway, scarcely missing the garage door as it opens. The cement is cold beneath his feet as he emerges, door slamming open, left that way as he yanks open the one to the back.

He has always been so careful to prevent blood from reaching the cream-colored seats of his car, decadently soft, a shade so near to white now dark, black that would appear as crimson in more light, across the seats and onto the floor.

A hissed curse, no mind for language now, as Hannibal pulls the boy from the car. Cradling him in arms to bring him into the house. Not the basement, he won’t have Will awaken there. And he will have Will awaken. He will, he tells himself, there is no other way but for his little wolf to open wide blue eyes at him again and cling to him and breathe against him warm and alive, and it will not happen in that place of death, it will not happen where Will will part his eyelids and think himself dead.

The dining room table, then, and he bundles the boy closer before placing him there. He peels back the coat, tries not to see how pale the boy has grown, having thought him as porcelain before and now absent the flush of scarlet in his cheeks. Absent of color, absent of life.

A void, such as Hannibal feels growing ever faster within himself.

“Will,” Hannibal breathes, a softer tone now, pushing his hair back from his face. “Breathe, Will. How can I teach you if you will not even breathe for me?”

A soft choked noise and Will turns his head, lips working as though to say something but he just manages to part them to breathe.

And breathing is all Hannibal asked of him.

“Good boy,” he sighs, leaning in to kiss his forehead, “My beautiful, clever boy. I knew you could. You can. You can and you will. Keep breathing, Will.”

The breaths are small, shallow, almost rasped now, but they’re there, Will pushing himself to live as he had always fought to, battling his body now instead of another.

Hannibal leaves him only when the breathing has become constant after ten breaths. Short and quick as they are, he’s breathing. He’s not dying on him, not here.

Not like this.

Hannibal drags the medical bag with him down the stairs, hoping he won’t need to leave Will again for more than water, cloths, things easily gathered in the kitchen.

When he returns, WIll is making gentle mewling sounds, neck arched back and brows furrowed with the effort of moving his body, this useless heavy thing that refuses to listen.

Beneath the blood, dark bruises are forming on his torso, down his thighs. Swelling across his face, skin that split beneath fists, feet - the images force themselves on Hannibal and he remembers tearing ribs snapping from their moorings with such force that his shoulders ache for it and he wishes there were more yet that he could destroy.

He swallows, steadies, soothes the boy with another cool hand against his brow. Gingerly, he peels the coat back further from the boy’s body, hushing him as he feels the warmth, the smell of Hannibal removed from around him to see further what was done.

“Stay still,” Hannibal instructs, softly, the way he has before when they curled together and Will’s body shuddered for more pleasant things than this and he listened and obeyed. “Stay still and breathe.”

Grasping Will’s wrist, Hannibal tugs his arm gently away from his middle. No fresh swell of blood this time, Hannibal notices, and it burns cold in him. A gash, long and deep, across the boy’s belly, baring skin and fat to the parts beneath.

Hannibal had envisioned the boy laid bare enough times that he did not imagine it would bring his hands to shaking to finally see it. He forces them into a clench, stretches, and the tremor passes by sheer force of will as he puts on gloves.

“You have always suffered so beautifully,” Hannibal breathes. “My strong boy. Little wolf among the sheep. Hate me, now, for this. Spit. Swear.” A pause, an idea, sudden, as he feels the boy’s attention on the sound of his voice, however far apart they are, hears Hannibal calling to him.

“Greek, Will. Swear in Greek.”

A furrow of brow, scarce movement drawn between his eyes, and when Hannibal sees it he parts the boy’s skin. He searches, quickly, careful probing to see how deep the blade has gone, finding that it did not catch the organs held in this little cage of bone and skin and blood, merely opened it, hip to hip.

Relief, short-lived, as Hannibal draws out the needle and suture. There is neither time, nor need for how cold Will has grown, how settled into the icy recesses of shock, for anesthesia. He does not have the means here to put the boy under, no precious minutes to be further spared for a local.

He tries not to think of how his palm spread across this belly, how his mouth laid adoration on it, knelt at this boy’s feet and no other, and he begins.

Will doesn’t swear. If he can form words they’re weak little things that barely pass his lips coherent. Instead he cries out, soft utterly childish things. Little sniffs, keening sweet little noises, and every single one of them tugs at Hannibal’s heart as he works.

Will brings up one hand and presses it against his eyes, smearing the blood with his tears, as he keeps his teeth grit, trying, still, not to cry as he’s being put together like a ragdoll dropped on the side of the road and abandoned. Forgotten and unwanted.

But Hannibal had picked him up, had taken him home to fix.

His boy.

His once beautiful boy.

And then, amongst the sobs, amongst the little wails of agony so deep they seem to bleed past his lips, Will manages a word, just one, and Hannibal feels himself laugh in relief.

He ducks his hand against the back of his arm, a moment to ease himself, to force himself to breathe now, before Hannibal tugs firmly against the suture to hold it in place.

“One,” he murmurs, aching fondness that bleeds from him as Will bleeds across his table and he draws another stitch through. Each careful, each precise, deliberate attention as he goes, slow work, but Will is breathing. Will is breathing and he’s swearing and the little noises he makes fill Hannibal with a rage, a defensiveness so intense that it’s all he can do to marvel at the depth of it.

His devotion, made manifest, in every stitch and every sound.

“More, Will,” he coaxes the boy, glancing upward to watch the shallow rise and fall of his chest, to watch his hand drape limp across his eyes. “I will take you there. I will take you to Greece and I will watch you on the sand and in the ruins. The tourists will descend around us and I will not know how to swear and you will have to teach me.”

Hannibal swallows, a clicking sound. “We will go, Will, together.”

Will sobs again, too exhausted to laugh, too exhausted now, even, for more than shallow breaths and quiet sobs. Once in a while he coughs, fluid filling his mouth and lungs before he leans over to spit blood against the table and mumble something Hannibal is sure is an apology. Or a curse. Obedient, even, in this. He holds him still. Then he starts again.

“Six, Will, you’re really working up a list,” he murmurs, drawing the back of his wrist over his forehead to wipe the sweat there, beneath him, Will’s breathing grows shallower now, irregular. Little gasps and quiet chokes making his little body shudder.

“Insatiable boy,” it’s weak, soft, but the words keep coming, pouring from him over the prone little form as he works.

“You’re being so good for me,” he whispers, tugging another suture, just a few more, now. He marvels at the boy’s endurance, his ability to stay conscious through this torture, a punishment Hannibal had never wanted to inflict on him. “Staying so still, using your words.”

Will shudders, hard, and lies very still for a moment. It takes a long time for his chest to rise and fall on a breath again. Hannibal leans over to press his lips to his temples, to smell Will beneath the blood and bile and agony.

“Stay with me, Will, come on.”

Each stitch a mark, each a claim laid on this boy’s skin, no mind for the wound beneath it, but only for its repair. He pulls the last stitch firm, glides fingers across the row of them, and only as he ties it off does he note how quickly he completed it. It should have taken longer, to stitch closed a lateral wound, the width of the abdomen, but on an abdomen that now seems so small beneath his hands.

He is so rarely given opportunity to appreciate how frail the boy can be, in light of how often he’s so strong. Will is quiet, now, there is breath, shallow, steady, distant, and Hannibal lifts a gloved hand to press against Will’s cheek. 

Unconscious, and perhaps the better for it.

It’s when he withdraws his fingers from beneath his boy’s jaw that he realizes his hands are shaking again. Resistance against reason that tells him Will needs a transfusion, that he needs all the tools available to a hospital that Hannibal does not have here. Hannibal knows, but he fights it, a wild possessiveness grasping him.

His Will, his boy, his fierce little wolf. Unwilling to let him be gone, to let him be taken elsewhere, away from Hannibal, away from their home where he belongs. A ferocious desire to tear the throat out of anyone who tries to come near, who would try to take Will away.

A breath, forced to steady, to tell himself to think clearly, and fight against the feral fury that makes Hannibal foolish, now, in his love for him.

He hums at the word as it cross his mind, and lets it linger.

Hannibal tugs off his gloves to withdraw his phone.

A student caught out late, a wrong turn on a Baltimore street that found him a victim of assault, a brutal attack with blade and fists and feet. His mentor, nearby, the first he thought to call.

Three numbers. Just three. 

One look at the boy on his table, his shallow breaths, the smeared blood against him like war paint. A battle for which survival is not yet guaranteed.

Three numbers.

Hannibal sets the phone to dial. And waits.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [[x]](http://wwhiskeyandbloodd.tumblr.com/odalisque-epilogue)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Odalysium](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2428544) by [drinkbloodlikewine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/drinkbloodlikewine/pseuds/drinkbloodlikewine), [whiskeyandspite](https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiskeyandspite/pseuds/whiskeyandspite)
  * [On the Prowl](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2728220) by [mresundance](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mresundance/pseuds/mresundance)
  * [Praeparatio](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3506594) by [TheSeaVoices](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSeaVoices/pseuds/TheSeaVoices)
  * [Trade](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3613542) by [drinkbloodlikewine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/drinkbloodlikewine/pseuds/drinkbloodlikewine), [whiskeyandspite](https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiskeyandspite/pseuds/whiskeyandspite)




End file.
